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THE  EARLY  YEARS 
OF  THE  SATURDAY  CLUB 

1855-1870 


THE  EARLY  YEARS 

of  the 

SATURDAY  CLUB 

1855-1870 

By  Edward  Waldo  Emerson 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


f-;3.i 
625" 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HouHGTON  Mifflin  Company 

MDCCCCXVIII 


10STOK  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS, 


COPYRIGHT,    I91S,    BY   THE   SATURDAY   CLUB 
ALL   RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  December  iqi8 


o  fi 


w 


PREFACE 

ON  the  title-page  of  this  hook  I  appear  as  the  author;  the  duty  of 
preparing  it  was  assigned  to  me  by  the  Club,  and  I  have  worked 
for  several  years  searching  for  and  gathering  material  for  this  chron- 
icle and  building  with  it  as  best  I  might.  But  because  of  the  eminence 
of  the  men  who  formed  this  happy  company,  and  of  those  whom  they 
chose  to  join  them;  also  because,  in  those  awakening  and  stirring 
times,  they  laboured,  each  in  his  own  way,  but  sometimes  combining, 
to  serve,  to  free,  and  to  elevate  their  Country,  —  the  story  of  the  Club  took 
on  larger  dimensions.  Hence,  to  hasten  the  appearance  of  the  book,  I 
asked  our  associate  Professor  Bliss  Perry  to  give  his  help.  It  has 
been  most  valuable.  At  his  suggestion,  four  other  members  have  writ- 
ten sketches  for  the  book;  Mr.  Perry  contributed  nine,  Mr.  Storey 
two,  Governor  McCall  one,  Mr.  DeWolfe  Howe  one,  Mr.  Edward  W. 
Forbes  one.  Each  is  signed  with  the  initials  of  the  writer.  To  all  of 
these  my  thanks  are  due  for  excellent  help. 

The  original  plan  of  the  Club  was  to  preserve  a  record  of  its  first 
half-century  of  existence.  By  sanction  of  the  Club  only  sixteen  years 
of  its  history  are  here  presented,  but  they  tell  of  its  Golden  Age. 

To  the  families  or  representatives  of  deceased  members  whose  biog- 
raphies, journals,  or  poems  are  quoted,  the  thanks  of  the  Saturday 
Club  are  here  rendered.  If,  by  inadvertence,  there  has  been  failure  to 
ask  leave  of  these,  the  entire  good-will  of  those  whom  I  have  approached 
makes  us  sure  of  their  approval. 

The  publishing  houses  have  all  shown  us  courtesy  and  generosity. 
First  should  be  gratefully  acknowledged  the  debt  owed  to  Messrs. 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company  for  their  furtherance  of  this  work  by 
freest  permission  to  quote  largely  from  books  published  by  them,  me- 
moirs or  poems,  or  those  containing  anecdotes  of  our  members. 
Messrs.  Little,  Brown  and  Company  kindly  let  us  freely  quote  from 
"  The  Art  Life  of  William  Morris  Hunt,^^  by  Miss  Knowlton,  and  the 
"Memoir  of  Henry  Lee,"  by  Mr.  John  Torrey  Morse,  and  to  both  of 
these  authors  we  owe  thanks.   To  Messrs.  D.  Appleton  and  Company 


vi  Preface 


we  owe  free  quotation  from  Miss  Hale^s  ^^  Memoir  of  Thomas  Gold 
Appleton,''^  and  leave  to  reproduce  the  best  portrait  of  him;  to  Messrs. 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  use  of  much  matter  from  Dr.  James  K.  Hos- 
mer's  '^  Last  Leaf^ ;  to  The  Macmillan  Company,  the  use  of  passages 
from  the  ''^ Life  of  Edwin  L.  Godkin^\'  to  Messrs.  Harper  and  Broth- 
ers, quotations  from  Horatio  Bridgets  ^^Recollections  of  Hawthorne," 
and  passages  from  some  others  of  their  older  publications.  Messrs. 
Charles  Scribner^s  Sons  have  most  courteously  given  permission  for 
many  extracts  from  Henry  James,  Jr?s,  ^''Memories  of  a  Son  and 
Brother."  We  are  grateful  to  Mr.  John  Jay  Chapman  for  much 
charming  material  taken  from  his  ''''Memories  and  Milestones." 

This  wide  quotation  was  essential  in  the  production  of  this  work 
and  we  hope  that  the  younger  generation  may,  perhaps,  by  these  ex- 
tracts, be  drawn  to  the  original  sources. 

To  Mr.  Herbert  R.  Gibbs  we  owe  the  careful  Index  to  this  volume, 
and  great  pains  have  been  taken  by  the  Art  Department  of  The  River- 
side Press  in  securing  and  reproducing  the  portraits  in  our  gallery. 

Edward  Waldo  Emerson 
Concord,  November,  191 8 


CONTENTS 

Introductory xi 

I.  The  Attraction i 

II.  1 85 5-1 856.   The  Saturday  Club  is  Born:  Also  the 

Magazine  or  Atlantic  Club        .      .      .      .'^.11 

III.  1856 21 

Louis  Agassiz 30 

Richard  Henry  Dana,  Jr 39 

John  Sullivan  Dwight 46 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 53 

Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar 63 

James  Russell  Lowell 72 

John  Lothrop  Motley 82 

Benjamin  Peirce 96 

Samuel  Gray  Ward 109 

Edwin  Percy  Whipple 117 

Horatio  Woodman .124 

IV.  1857 128 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow 135 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 143 

Cornelius  Conway  Felton '159 

V.  1858        . 166 

William  Hickling  Prescott .180 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier 188 

VL  1859        . .      .197 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne       ....,,.  207 

Thomas  Gold  Appleton       . 217 

John  Murray  Forbes 227 


Vlll 


Contents 


VII.  i860 234 

Charles  Eliot  Norton 238 

VIII.  1861 249 

James  Elliot  Cabot 260 

Samuel  Gridley  Howe       .      .      ...      .      .  269 

Frederick  Henry  Hedge 277 

Estes  Howe 282 

IX.  1862 287 

Charles  Sumner 297 

X.  1863    309 

Henry  James    . 322 

XL  1864 334 

John  Albion  Andrew 357 

Martin  Brimmer    .........  366 

James  Thomas  Fields 376 

Samuel  Worcester  Rowse 388 

xii.  1865 392 

XIII.  1866      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .407 

Jeffries  Wyman 420 

XIV.  1867 ,      .      .  428 

Ephraim  Whitman  Gurney      ......  442 

XV.  1868 447 

XVI.  1869 456 

William  Morris  Hunt 465 

XVII.  1870 474 

Charles  Francis  Adams 484 

Index ,      .  503 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Louis  Agassiz Frontispiece 

Louis  Agassiz  at  the  Blackboard 30 

Richard  Henry  Dana,  Jr. .40 

John  Sullivan  Dwight     .........    46 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 54 

Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar 64 

James  Russell  Lowell 72 

John  Lothrop  Motley .       .82 

Benjamin  Peirce 96 

Samuel  Gray  Ward no 

Edwin  Percy  Whipple      .       .      ,      .      .      .      .      .      .118 

Horatio  Woodman 124 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow 136 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 144 

Cornelius  Conway  Felton ;      .       .  160 

The  Adirondack  Club 170 

From  the  painting  by  William  J.  Stillman 

William  Hickling  Prescott   . 180 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier  • .       .188 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne 208 

Thomas  Gold  Appleton    .      .      . 218 

John  Murray  Forbes 228 

Charles  Eliot  Norton 238 

James  Elliot  Cabot 260 

Samuel  Gridley  Howe 270 

Frederick  Henry  Hedge 278 

Estes  Howe .  282 

Charles  Sumner 298 


Illustrations 


Henry  James •      •  3^^ 

John  Albion  Andrew. 358 

Martin  Brimmer 366 

James  Thomas  Fields 376 

Samuel  Worcester  Rowse .  388 

From  a  sketch  by  himself  in  a  letter  ,     _   .   _ 

Jeffries  Wyman 420 

Ephraim  Whitman  Gurney      . 442 

William  Morris  Hunt 466 

Charles  Francis  Adams 484 


INTRODUCTORY 

TWELVE  years  ago  the  Saturday  Club  sent  to  me,  absent, 
its  mandate  to  do  it  a  service,  honourable  but  difficult. 
Mr.  Norton,  our  President  at  that  time,  last  survivor,  revered 
and  loved,  of  the  fellowship  of  the  earlier  years,  wrote:  "The  Club 
is  about  fifty  years  old,  and  it  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be 
well  if  a  history  of  it  were  written  before  its  story  became  faint, 
and  before  more  legends  of  dubious  validity  gathered  around  it. 
...  I  spoke  of  this,  a  day  or  two  since,  to  President  Eliot,  and 
found  that  he  was  quite  of  my  mind.  When  he  asked  me  who 
could  do  the  work,  I  told  him  that  I  hoped  you  might  be  willing  to 
undertake  it,  and  this  suggestion  he  received.  ...  I  hope  you  will 
entertain  it  readily,  and  even  that  it  may  allure  you.  The  subject 
seems  to  have  many  attractions,  for  it  admits  of  studies  of  the 
character  of  many  of  the  most  remarkable  men  in  our  community 
during  the  last  half-century." 

I  wrote  at  once  to  Mr.  Norton  that  I  was  much  honoured  by 
being  deemed  fit  by  the  Club  for  so  interesting  a  work,  but  saying 
that  I  could  not  feel  that  I  was  so,  not  having  been  chosen  a 
member  until  it  had  existed  a  third  of  a  century  when  most  of  the 
first  glorious  company  of  friends  were  gone,  and  urged  that  he, 
who  knew  them  so  well,  would  write  his  memories.  He  answered 
that  he  was  too  old  to  do  so,  but  would  gladly  receive  me  at  his 
home  and  help  me  with  his  recollections.  So  it  seemed  that  I  must 
do,  as  best  I  might,  the  will  of  the  Club.  I  had  to  ask  its  patience, 
being  already  pledged  to  a  task  only  lately  brought  to  an  end.  I 
gladly  availed  myself  of  the  invitation  of  this  hereditary  friend, 
and  in  his  delightful  study  passed  three  or  four  mornings  asking 
questions  and  taking  notes  of  his  memories,  but  I  had  no  right  to 
weary  him.  It  is  sad  to  think  how  much  more  I  might  have 
learned  that  no  one  now  can  tell,  and  soon  he  was  taken  away. 
Others,  too,  have  gone,  or  their  memories  become  dim.  But  still 
I  have  had  the  privilege  of  hearing  from  persons  of  an  older  gen- 
eration—  some    of    them    ladies  —  reminiscences    of    our    great 


xii  Introductory 

members.  I  have  sought  in  books  written  by  or  about  them,  or, 
in  letters,  journals,  poems,  anything  that  might  carry  us  into 
their  presence  or  their  meetings.  But  how  little  remains  of  what 
was  so  much  to  them! 

One  trouble,  embarrassing  to  deal  with,  confronts  the  chronicler 
at  the  outset.  At  the  present  time  there  are  more  than  seventy 
names  of  departed  members;  of  these  Appleton,  Dana  (and  his 
biographer  Adams),  Emerson,  Fields  (through  his  wife's  records 
of  his  home  conversation),  Forbes,  the  two  senior  Hoars,  Holmes, 
Henry  James,  Sr.,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Norton,  Whipple,  Whittier, 
have  left,  in  their  books,  journals,  letters,  or  poems,  passages 
about  the  Club  such  as  it  would  be  natural  to  introduce  about 
the  members  or  the  events  in  which  they  bore  a  part,  but  these 
are  the  only  ones  I  find  affording  such  help.  Even  should  a  few 
more  be  found  to  have  left  records,  that  would  still  leave  more 
than  half  a  hundred  men  of  eminence  or  charm  from  whom  no 
words  about  this  goodly  fellowship  remain.  I  search  for  first- 
hand memories  of  the  early  days  and  find  that  our  two  oldest 
surviving  members  did  not  enter  the  Club  until  the  fifteenth 
and  nineteenth  years  respectively  of  its  existence,  and  took  no 
notes  —  any  more  than  we  do.  However  fortunate  it  was  for 
members  at  the  time  that  "The  Club  had  no  Boswell,"  as  Dr. 
Holmes  said,  who  might  have  been  one's  next  neighbour  at 
table,  yet,  for  the  present  purpose,  we  may  add  his  word  "un- 
fortunately." For  several  years  there  was  not  even  a  secretary. 
When  such  an  office  was  created,  its  successive  holders  held  that 
the  records  must  be  confined  to  business,  and,  being  gifted  souls 
who  walked  on  higher  planes,  often  let  weeks  —  once  almost  a 
twelvemonth  —  pass  without  an  entry. 

*  Happily  there  were  at  least  eight  poets  in  this  friendly  group, 
and  as  many  more  to  whom  affection  or  some  occasion  gave  the 
impulse  to  verse.  Thus,  if  the  story  drags,  it  can  be  helped  on  its 
way  by  the  poems  called  forth  by  occasions  of  joy  or  sorrow.  Of 
poems  not  easily  placed  in  the  narrative  a  group  will  be  found  at 
the  end. 


THE  EARLY  YEARS 
OF  THE  SATURDAY  CLUB 

1 855-1 870 


Hie  manus  oh  patriam  pugnando  vulnera  passi, 
Quique  sacerdotes  casti  dum  vita  manehat, 
Quique  pii  vates  et  Phcebo  digna  locuti, 
Inventus  aut  qui  vitam  excoluere  per  arteSj 
Quique  sui  memores  alios  fecere  merendo  ; 
Omnibus  his  nivea  cinguntur  tempora  vitta. 

VIRGILj  -ffiNEID.  BOOK  VI 

Here  the  heroes  abide,  war-mangled  in  cause  of  their  country ^ 
Here  men  holy,  spotless  in  life  till  its  pilgrimage  ended, 
Loyal  hards  anigh  them  sang  true  to  the  song  of  Apollo, 
Wise  men  also,  helpers  by  wit  of  man  in  his  toiling. 
They  who,  faithful  in  life,  made  others  mindful  of  duty  ; 
Lo  !  the  fillet  gleams  snow-white  on  each  forehead  immortal. 


THE  EARLY  YEARS 
OF  THE  SATURDAY  CLUB 

Chapter  I 
THE  ATTRACTION 

Redeunt  saturnia  regna. 

Virgil,  Eclogues 

IN  the  middle  of  the  last  century  a  constellation,  which —  as 
separate  stars  of  differing  magnitude,  but  all  bright  —  had  for 
twenty  years  been  visible,  at  first  dimly,  in  the  New  England 
heavens,  ascending,  was  seen  as  a  group,  gave  increasing  light  and 
cheer  here  and  to  the  westward-journeying  sons  and  daughters; 
reached  bur  zenith;  even  began  to  be  reported  by  star-gazers  be- 
yond the  ocean. 

These  brave  illuminators,  —  poets,  scholars,  statesmen,  work- 
ers in  science,  art,  law,  medicine,  large  business,  and  good  citizen- 
ship, —  by  the  fortune  of  the  small  area  of  New  England  and  its 
few  centres  of  ripening  culture,  were  more  easily  drawn  together. 

In  the  summer  of  1855,  eleven  of  these  agreed  to  meet  for 
monthly  dinners  in  Boston.  They  soon  drew  friends  with  genius  or 
wit  into  their  circle. 

When  the  often  asked  question  comes  up,  —  Why  did  so  many 
men  suddenly  appear  in  that  generation,  eminent  in  their  various 
callings,  using  their  gifts  nobly  for  the  public  good,  simple  livers 
withal;  and  why,  with  another  half  century's  immense  advantages 
and  opportunities,  nothing  like  it  has  appeared  In  this  country  t  — 
an  answer  might  be  hazarded  something  like  this:  The  struggle 
for  existence,  in  the  new  country,  with  untamed  nature  and  man 
in  the  seventeenth  century;  in  the  eighteenth,  the  first  only  les- 
sened and  the  second  increased  by  the  French  and  Indian  neigh- 
bours, and  later,  by  the  oppression  of  the  mother  country;  then, 
early  in  the  nineteenth,  a  modified  repetition  of  the  latter,  and  the 


The  Saturday  Club 


general  poverty  resulting  from  both.  Over  and  above  all  this 
struggle  for  life  and  scant  comfort,  leaving  no  time  for  literature, 
science,  and  art,  not  only  did  the  prolonged  danger  and  the  expense 
of  crossing  the  ocean  forbid  enlightening  travel  to  all  except  a 
few  merchants  and  statesmen,  but  villages  and  smaller  towns  were 
practically  shut  off  from  the  larger  centres,  now  cities. 

But  at  the  time  when  most  of  these  gifted  men  of  the  Eastern 
States  were  growing  boys,  the  years  of  danger,  famine,  and  ex- 
treme struggle  had  gone  by,  a  moderate  prosperity  had  come, 
stage-lines  were  established  on  the  roads,  ships  were  better,  schools 
and  colleges  were  improved  and  the  latter  not  regarded  mainly  as 
training  places  for  ministers  and  teachers;  religion  was  assuming 
a  milder  and  more  human  form,  which  softened  life  in  the  homes. 
Some  good  libraries,  beside  those  in  the  colleges,  were  established, 
—  the  fame  of  new  books,  and  then  the  books,  crossed  the  sea, 
there  was  time  to  read,  also  eager  appetite,  only  sharpened  by 
indulgence  and  by  the  references  to  other  authors  in  Great  Britain 
and  on  the  European  continent.  Through  Coleridge,  attention 
was  turned  to  German  philosophy,  and  Schiller's  and  Lessing's 
verse,  and,  through  Carlyle,  to  Goethe. 

Aspiring  young  scholars  —  George  Ticknor,  the  Everetts,  Ban- 
croft, Cogswell,  Frederick  H.  Hedge,  Charles  T.  Brooks  of  New- 
port —  went  to  pursue  their  studies  in  Germany,  while  students 
of  medicine  and  natural  science  —  as  Holmes,  Bigelow,  Charles 
T.  Jackson  —  went  to  Paris,  as  also  did  art  students  like  William 
Morris  Hunt,  —  and  others,  like  Crawford,  Powers,  and  Story, 
to  Rome  —  visiting  England  on  the  way.  Others  went  for  gen- 
eral culture,  like  Prescott,  Sumner,  Longfellow,  Cabot,  and  Park- 
man.  Their  horizon  and  their  field  of  literature  were  broadened. 
They  had  seen  art  and  culture;  also  oppression,  and  brave  men 
struggling  towards  liberty.  Full  of  new  emotions,  they  returned 
home,  now  aware  of  America's  deficiencies,  but  exulting  in  her 
opportunities.  They  became  teachers  in  various  fields,  and  their 
influence,  reinforced  by  many  patriot  refugees  from  Germany, 
like  Dr.  FoUen  and  Francis  Lieber,  was  inspiring  to  the  young 
generation. 

A  general  spiritual  and  intellectual  awakening  which  seemed  in 


The  Attraction 


the  air,  gained  force  from  this  enlightening  influence.  Eager  study, 
more  valiant  and  original  writing,  combinations  for  discussion  be- 
gan; communities  gathered  in  brave  hope  to  make  Hfe  more  sen- 
sible, many-sided,  higher  in  its  plane;  reforms  of  every  sort  were 
urged  and  tried,  the  fruitful  one  of  which  was  that  against  Slavery. 

But  concerning  the  New  Englanders  born  in  the  first  third  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  it  is  essential  to  keep  in  mind  this  fact,  that, 
to  these  more  cheerful  and  independent  descendants  of  Pilgrims  or 
Puritans,  life  was  still  serious,  amusement  occasional  and  second- 
ary; they  still  lived  in  the  presence  of  the  unseen;  they  worshipped, 
and  went  apart  for  solitary  thought;  many  of  them  came  in  con- 
tact with  life's  stern  conditions,  largely  served  themselves  and 
practised  self-denial  and  were  familiar  with  economic  shifts;  they 
were  hardier  than  we,  and  the  few  rich  ones  would  be  now  deemed 
only  in  very  moderate  circumstances.  Duty  walked  beside  them 
from  childhood.  The  struggle  against  the  then  aggressive  and  ad- 
vancing institution  of  Slavery,  and  the  vast  war  in  which  this  culmi- 
nated, sobered  and  yet  inspired,  in  its  later  days,  that  generation. 

On  that  crisis  followed  the  growth  of  the  country,  its  prosper- 
ity, the  miracles  wrought  by  Science  in  every  occupation,  and  in 
the  house,  —  also  wider  relations.  We  all  know  too  well  the  re- 
sulting hurried  and  complicated  life,  the  high  pressure  in  work  and 
in  play,  favourable  to  quick  wits  and  athletic  bodies  and  great  na- 
tional achievement,  —  unfriendly  to  the  higher  promptings  of  the 
Spirit  in  solitude,  and  the  finer  perceptions  guiding  life  and  colour- 
ing production.  The  later  generation  does  its  task  bravely,  but  it  is 
of  a  different  kind,  and  does  not  meet  the  same  wants.  The  old 
ground  now  lies  fallow.    In  time  its  better  crop  should  spring  up. 

But,  to  go  back  a  little,  In  "the  thirties"  and  "the  forties,"  as 
part  of  the  general  awakening,  revolution  began  to  appear  here 
and  there  in  education,  religion,  social  and  political  Institutions, 
for  new  questions  and  impulses  came  to  the  consciences  of  the 
wise,  and  also  of  the  unwise,  and  these  had  to  be  considered  and 
perhaps  tried.  Such  times  are  uncomfortable,  but  had  to  be  gone 
through,  for  insistent  propagandists  thronged  the  roads  of  New 
England,  and  John  Baptist  voices  would  be  heard. 


The  Saturday  Club 


But  in  the  early  "fifties"  times  were  pleasanter  to  live  in.  The 
reforms  had  been  sifted.  Questions  like  Fourierite  community- 
life,  extreme  vegetarianism  and  avoidance  of  slave-labour  prod- 
ucts, abolition  of  domestic  service,  —  even  of  money,  and  of 
marriage,  —  had  been  considered  and  dismissed.  Temperance 
had  met  with  a  gratifying  degree  of  success.  Conscience  had  won 
away  from  the  old  Whigs  a  large  and  strong  party.  Anti-slavery 
people  were  no  longer  despised,  and  imperious  Southern  rule  was 
now  realized  and  increasingly  opposed.  All  this  made  for  peace 
and  more  genial  social  relations  here  when  the  new  ideas  had  passed 
the  crude  stage.  And  yet  to  have  been  born  and  to  have  come 
into  active  thought  and  deed  in  those  years  of  strong  and  conflict- 
ing tides  of  intellect  and  conscience,  surely  moved  and  strengthened 
the  characters  of  many  of  the  men  of  whom  this  story  treats. 

THE  DESIRE  AND  THE  FORESHADOWING 

Certain  foreshadowings  of  our  Club  appear  by  1836.  Mr.  Emer- 
son's and  Mr.  Alcott's  journals  during  this  period  record  frequent 
gatherings  at  private  houses  in  Boston,  Concord,  or  Medford  for 
interchange  of  thought,  apparently  without  regular  organization, 
—  friends  m.eeting  and  inducing  other  friends  to  come,  —  yet  the 
name  "Symposium"  seems  to  have  been  used  for  such  a  gather- 
ing. The  meetings  were  by  day  to  suit  country  members,  but  such 
an  hour  naturally  limited  the  attendance  to  scholars,  clergymen, 
writers,  and  men  of  leisure,  and  no  refreshments  were  served. 
Among  the  men  whose  names  I  find,  more  than  one  half  were  or 
had  been  clergymen  —  Rev.  Ephraim  Peabody,  Rev.  Frederick  H. 
Hedge,  Rev.  Convers  Francis,  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Rev. 
William  Henry  Channing,  Rev.  Theodore  Parker,  Rev.  Cyrus  A. 
Bartol,  Rev.  Caleb  Stetson,  and,  then  unfrocked,  George  Rip- 
ley, John  Sullivan  Dwight,  George  Partridge  Bradford,  Orestes 
Brownson,  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  and  the  laymen  were 
Amos  Bronson  Alcott,  James  Elliot  Cabot,  Jones  Very,  sometimes 
Henry  James,  Thoreau  once  at  least.  Six  of  these  were,  later, 
members  of  the  Saturday  Club.  Here  then  were  sublime  specu- 
lation, theology,  metaphysics,  scholarship,  poetical  aspirations, 
and  philanthropy.    But  though  music  also  was  represented  by 


T'he  Attraction 


Dwight,  and  Cabot,  beside  his  philosophy,  was  interested  in  art 
and  in  natural  history,  one  feels  that  the  metaphysical  fencing  was 
sometimes  tedious  to  all  but  the  swordsmen,  and  that  Alcott's 
lofty  and  long  flights  out  of  sight  from  the  plane  of  the  under- 
standing, and  ignoring  its  questions,  might  have  vexed  these; 
that  the  aggressive  Parker's  blows  at  beliefs  as  they  were  must 
have  troubled  the  more  delicate  Ephraim  Peabody  and  George 
Bradford,  and  Emerson  too,  in  spite  of  his  respect  for  him.  In 
short,  that  such  a  group  needed  lightening,  dilution,  lubrication 
by  wit,  humour,  helles-lettres,  art,  the  advance  of  science,  and  to 
be  more  in  touch  with  the  active  life  of  the  world. 

At  about  the  time  when  the  Symposia  languished,  perhaps 
about  1844,  Emerson  wrote  in  his  journal,  "Would  it  not  be  a  good 
cipher  for  the  seal  of  the  lonely  Society  which  forms  so  fast  in 
these  days,  —  two  porcupines  meeting  with  all  their  spines  erect, 
and  the  motto,  *We  converse  at  the  quills'  end'?" 

From  perhaps  too  constant  association  with  philosophers  and 
reformers,  Emerson,  about  the  time  when  the  Symposia  ceased, 
was  finding  great  refreshment  and  pleasure  in  a  friendship  with 
Samuel  Gray  Ward,  a  young  man  of  high  aspirations,  careful 
breeding,  much  natural  gift  for  and  knowledge  of  art,  and  en- 
tirely at  home  in  society  and  literature.  A  series  of  letters,  given 
below,  show  the  foreshadowing  and  the  gradual  evolution  of  the 
Saturday  Club.  Six  years  before  its  existence  Emerson  was  talk- 
ing over  with  his  friend  a  scheme  of  a  more  genial  nature  than  the 
Symposia  for  a  Town-and-Country  Club,  where  lonely  scholars, 
poets,  and  naturalists,  like  those  of  Concord,  might  find  a  welcome 
resting-place  when  they  came  to  the  city,  and  meet  there,  not  only 
other  scholars  and  idealists,  but  also  men  of  afi'airs,  and  others 
with  the  ease  and  refinement  and  cultivated  tastes  that  society 
and  travel  had  given  them. 

Emerson  was  in  England  in  1847  and  1848,  and  in  the  latter 
year  writes  to  Ward  thence  of  the  literary  and  society  men  he  had 
met:  "They  have  all  carried  the  art  of  agreeable  sensations  to  a 
wonderful  pitch;  they  know  everything,  have  everything;  they 
are  rich,  plain,  polite,  proud,  and  admirable,  but,  though  good  for 
them,  it  ends  in  the  using.  I  shall,  or  should  soon,  have  enough  of 


The  Saturday  Club 


this  play  for  my  occasion.  The  seed-corn  is  oftener  found  in  quite 
other  districts.  But  I  am  very  much  struck  with  the  profusion  of 
talent." 

The  above  letter  was  one  of  many  written  to  him  by  Emerson, 
which  Mr.  Ward,  a  year  or  two  before  his  death,  sent  to  Mr.  Nor- 
ton to  help  on  the  history  of  the  Club,  introduced  as  follows. 
Mr.  Ward  wrote :  — 

Washington,  March  27,  1906. 
My  DEAR  Norton:  — 

As  soon  as  I  found  by  your  letter  that  you  and  Edward  Emer- 
son are  in  search  of  material  for  the  History  of  the  Saturday  Club, 
it  occurred  to  me  that,  some  years  ago,  in  reading  over  Emerson's 
letters,  I  found  more  than  one  reference  to  its  beginning,  and,  on 
sending  for  the  letters  to  look  the  matter  up,  the  first  thing  I  laid 
my  hand  upon  are  the  enclosed  letters  which  go  back  to  the  very 
beginnings. 

I  find  by  the  letter  (Emerson's),  5th  of  October  In  that  year 
[1849],  what  I  had  entirely  forgotten,  that  the  first  suggestion 
came  from  me,  and  you  will  see  how  warmly  Emerson  took  it  up 
and  made  it  his  own. 

But  a  letter,  written  three  months  before  the  one  which  Mr. 
Ward  alludes  to,  shows  that  the  Town-and-Country  Club  was  not 
altogether  a  failure  in  his  friend's  mind;  also  that  it  included  five 
future  members  of  the  Saturday  Club  besides  himself:  — 

Concord,  12  July,  1849. 
My  dear  Ward  :  — 

The  Club  Is  not  so  out  at  elbows  as  your  friend  fancied,  for  be- 
sides other  good  men  whom  I  do  not  remember,  Cabot  was  there, 
who  Is  always  bright,  erect,  military,  courteous,  and  knowing,  a 
man  to  make  a  club. 

Then  Edward  Bangs,  Edward  Tuckerman,  Hawthorne,  a  good 
Atkinson  whom  Cabot  brings,  Hlllard,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  and 
other  men  of  this  world,  have  all  shown  themselves  once,  and, 
with  a  little  tenderness  and  reminding,  will  all  learn  to  come.  There 


The  Attraction 


is  a  whole  Lili's  Park  also  with  tusks  and  snakes  of  the  finest 
descriptions.^  Belief  is  the  principal  thing  with  clubs,  as  well  as 
in  trade  and  politics,  and  already  we  have  such  good  elements 
nominally  in  this,  that  the  good  luck  of  a  spirited  conversation 
or  one  or  two  happy  rencontres,  could  now  save  it.  Henry  James 
of  New  York  is  a  member,  and  I  had  the  happiest  half-hour  with 
that  man  lately  at  his  house,  so  fresh  and  expansive  he  is.  My  view 
now  is  to  accept  the  broadest  democratic  basis  and  we  can  elect 
twenty  people  every  month,  for  years  to  come,  and  yet  show  black 
balls  and  proper  spirit  at  "each  meeting.  So,  pray  you  to  shine 
with  all  your  beams  on  our  young  spirit.  .  .  . 

■  Yours  afFectionatelv, 

R.W.  E. 

From  the  next  three  letters  it  would  seem  that  Ward  had  pro- 
posed the  formation  of  a  smaller,  perhaps  a  dining  club,  including 
certain  members  of  the  former  one,  who  would  be  comfortable  and 
genial  as  well  as  wise  convives.  Emerson  gladly  falls  in  with  the 
plan,  but,  loyal  to  Alcott,  proposes  him  as  one.  The  Channing  he 
desires  is  not  the  whimsical  Concord  poet,  but  his  good  and  en- 
thusiastic cousin.  Rev.  William  Henry  Channing.  > 

Concord,  September  12,  1849. 

My  dear  Ward  :  — 

...  You  will  be  in  town  In  the  winter,  —  it  is  a  great  happiness, 
—  and  will  know  how  to  extract  the  club  of  the  club.  Cabot,  Chan- 
ning, Alcott,  Hillard,  Longfellow,  Edward  Bangs,  there  are  many 
bright  men  whom  the  sHghtest  arrangement  would  assemble, — 
perhaps  to  the  comfort  of  all,  —  can  they  not  bring  their  cigars  to 
the  Club  Room,  or  to  the  next  room  on  a  given  evening?  In  these 
days,  when  Natural  History  is  so  easily  paramount,  I  should  put 
most  trust,  as  I  myself  should  certainly  prefer,  that  the  nucleus 
of  the  company  should  be  savants.    But  Tuckerman,^  I  believe,  is 

1  Lili's  Park  is  a  half-humorous,  poetic,  autobiographic  allegory  of  Goethe's,  in  which 
he  represents  himself  as  a  bear  in  subjection  to  Lili's  charm. 

*  Edward  Tuckerman,  Professor  of  Botany  at  Amherst  College.  Dr.  Asa  Gray  called 
him  the  most  profound  and  trustworthy  American  lichenologist  of  his  day. 


8  The  Saturday  Club 

in  Europe,  and  Desor  ^  is  gone  exploring.   These  people  are  a  very 
clear,  disinfecting  basis.   But  I  wish  to  see  you  and  Cabot. 

Ever  yours, 

R.  W.  Emerson. 

Very  probably  Mr.  Ward  had  answered  Mr.  Emerson's  letter 
of  September  12  and  suggested  that  some  of  the  men  mentioned 
by  him,  especially  Alcott,  would  not  help  in  general  good  fellow- 
ship, and  suggested  in  his  letter  a  more  congenial  company. 

Here  follows  the  letter  which  Mr.  Ward  spoke  of  in  his  letter 
to  Norton :  — 

5th  October,  1849. 
I  should  be  delighted  with  your  plan  of  a  circle,  if  it  can  be 
brought  about;  but  I  fear  I  am  the  worst  person  that  could  be 
named,  except  Hawthorne,  to  attempt  it.  If  Tom  Appleton  were 
here,  and  had  not  lost  all  his  appetites,  he  is  a  king  of  clubs  —  but 
I  suppose  he  is  full.  Cabot,  Bangs, ^  and  William  [Henry]  Channing 
are  the  men  I  should  seek,  and  Henry  James  of  New  York,  if  he 
were  here,  as  he  used  to  talk  of  coming.  .  .  .  He  is  an  expansive, 
expanding  companion  and  would  remove  to  Boston  to  attend  a 
good  club  a  single  night. 

Again  he  writes :  — 

-    •  Concord,  26  December.  [1849.] 

I  was  in  town  an  hour  or  two  yesterday,  thoughtless  of  Christ- 
mas, when  I  left  home,  and  was  punished  for  my  paganism  by  not 
finding  you,  and  not  finding  any  one  with  whom  I  had  to  do,  at 
their  posts.  But  for  your  Club  news,  it  Is  the  best  that  can  be. 
I  saw  Bangs  two  or  three  days  ago,  and  Bradford^  on  Sunday. 
Both  heard  gladly,  but  both  made  the  same  doubt  —  they  had 

^  Edward  Desor,  a  young  Swiss  naturalist  and  geologist,  met  Agassiz  at  Neufchatel  in 
1837  and  became  his  collaborator  in  his  Alpine  studies.  Ten  years  later,  he  came  with 
Agassiz  to  the  United  States  and  was  Agassiz's  assistant  in  his  researches  at  Lake  Superior. 
He  returned  to  Switzerland  in  1852. 

2  Edward  Bangs,  a  lawyer  and  man  of  agreeable  presence  and  literary  tastes. 

8  George  Partridge  Bradford,  a  scholar  and  teacher,  genial  and  refined  but  excessively 
modest.  He  was  the  brother  of  Mrs.  Samuel  Ripley,  Mr.  Emerson's  aunt  by  marriage, 
and  great  friend. 


"The  Attraction 


nothing  to  bring.  Yet  they  will  doubtless  both  be  counted  in. 
Bradford  did  not  know  but  he  was  home  on  some  points ;  thought 
the  Club  had  better  give  the  supper,  and  not  the  members.  Then 
there  is  always  the  same  supper,  and  tender  persons  will  not  offer 
you  wine,  but  the  guilty,  broad-shouldered  Club  only.  Certainly 
it  is  better  to  have  the  Club  the  perpetual  host,  and  not  each 
bashful  member.  The  persons  named  by  Longfellow  are  doubt- 
less desirable,  Appleton  in  the  superlative  degree,  but  I  suppose 
him  all  preoccupied.  Yet  Longfellow  should  know.  Billings  I  do 
not  know;  nor  Perkins;  yet  have  no  objections.  Agasslz  again  I 
suppose  quite  too  full  already  of  societyv  What  night  is  best? 
Monday  is  freest.  For  me,  I  think  Tuesday  and  Wednesday  are 
inconvenient  for  [attending]  the  Club;  Tuesday  chiefly  because 
our  village  Club  of  twenty-five  farmers,  &c.,  meets  on  that  night 
and  I  do  not  wish  to  resign.  But  we  must  ballot  for  every  night 
in  the  week,  and  for  which  has  the  most  marks. 

Ever  yours, 

R.  W.  E. 

Saturday,  29  December.  [1849.] 
My  dear  Sam:  — 

I  shall  be  in  town  Monday  and  will  go  to  your  office  at  3  o'clock. 
Bradford  named  George  Russell,  and  thought  he  would  like  to 
join.  Rockwood  Hoar,  the  new  judge,  is  a  very  able  man,  and 
social;  do  you  know  him  t  Eustis,^  the  new  professor  at  Cambridge, 
is  said  to  be  valuable,  and  I  have  always  hoped  to  know  Tucker- 
man,  the  botanist;  who,  I  believe,  is  just  now  in  Europe.  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  feel  the  need  of  pressing  none  but  householders. 
Minors  and  cadets  make  better  clubs,  and  I  am  usually  willing 
to  run  the  risk  of  being  the  oldest  of  the  party.  .  .  . 

Yours, 

R.  W.  E. 

The  dream  now  seems  nearing  realization,  for  Longfellow  wrote 
in  his  journal,  February  22,  1850:  "Dined  with  Emerson  at 
Lowell's.  We  planned  a  new  club  to  dine  together  once  a  month." 

^  Henry  Lawrence  Eustis,  Professor  of  Engineering  in  the  Lawrence  Scientific  School. 


lO 


"The  Saturday  Club 


Emerson  now  felt  encouraged,  and  wrote  two  days  later  to 
Ward:  — 

24  February,  1850. 
I  saw  Longfellow  at  Lowell's  two  days  ago,  and  he  declared  that 
his  faith  in  clubs  was  firm.  "I  will  very  gladly,"  he  said,  "meet 
with  Ward  and  you  and  Lowell  and  three  or  four  others,  and 
dine  together."  Lowell  remarked,  "Well,  if  he  agrees  to  the  dinner, 
though  he  refuses  the  supper,  we  will  continue  the  dinner  till  next 
morning!"  Meantime,  as  measles,  the  influenza,  and  the  magazine 
appear  to  be  periodic  distempers,  so,  just  now,  Lowell  has  been 
seized  with  aggravated  symptoms  of  the  magazine,  —  as  badly  as 
Parker  or  Cabot  heretofore,  or  as  the  chronic  case  of  Alcott  and 
me.  He  wishes  me  to  see  something  else  and  better  than  the 
Knickerbocker.  He  came  up  to  see  me.  He  has  now  been  with 
Parker,  who  professed  even  joy  at  the  prospect  offered  him  of  tak- 
ing off  his  heavy  saddle,^  and  Longfellow  fosters  his  project.  Then 
Parker  urges  the  forming  of  a  kind  of  Anthology  Club :  ^  so  out  of 
all  these  resembhng  incongruities  I  do  not  know  but  we  shall  yet 

get  a  dinner  or  a  "Noctes." 

Ever  yours, 

R.  W.  E. 

'    *  The  short-lived  "New  England  Magazine,  of  which  Parker  was  editor. 

'  The  Anthology  Club  was  of  men  of  letters  which  had  existed  in  Boston  in  the  early 
years  of  the  century.  Emerson's  father  was  one  of  its  members,  and  editor  for  a  time  of 
the  journal,  The  Monthly  Anthology,  from  which  that  club  took  its  name. 


Chapter  II 
1855-1856 

THE  SATURDAY  CLUB  IS   BORN 

ALSO  THE  MAGAZINE  OR  ATLANTIC  CLUB 

The  flighty  purpose  never  is  o'ertook 
Unless  the  deed  go  with  it. 

Shaksfeare 

THOUGH  the  haze  of  remoteness  and  of  failing  memories 
had,  even  before  the  end  of  the  last  century,  begun  to  ob- 
scure the  origin  of  the  Saturday  Club,  and  also  because  of  a  mis- 
apprehension by  outsiders  very  natural  because  of  its  personnel, 
it  is  still  possible  to  discover  through  the  dimness  two  threads 
between  which  this  group  of  remarkable  men  oscillated  for  a  time 
as  a  centre  of  crystallization.  One  was  friendship  and  good-fel- 
lowship pure  and  simple.  The  other  was  literary,  and  involved 
responsibilities,  namely,  a  new  magazine.  In  each,  as  moving 
spirit,  there  was  an  active,  well-bred,  sociable  man,  eager  for  this 
notable  companionship  and  with  executive  skill  ready  to  manage 
the  details  of  the  festive  meetings. 

Two  clubs  actually  resulted,  and  nearly  at  the  same  time.  Of 
this,  conclusive  documentary  evidence  exists,  some  of  which  will 
be  here  given  and  some  referred  to.  The  membership  of  these 
clubs  was,  at  first,  largely  identical.  The  merely  friendly  group 
soon  became  elective;  somewhat  later  took  the  name  the  Saturday 
Club,  increased  much  in  size,  in  time  was  incorporated,  and  still 
flourishes,  a  pleasant,  utterly  informal  company  of  men  more  or 
less  eminent,  dining,  or  rather  having  a  long  lunch,  together  on  the 
last  Saturday  of  each  month,  except  July,  August,  and  September. 
The  other  club,  designed  to  interest  the  best  authors  in  launching 
a  really  good  magazine,  might  have  been  at  first  properly  called 
the  Magazine  Club,  but  not  until  1857  did  it  give  birth,  as  will  be 
told  in  detail,  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and,  after  that,  the  frequent 


12 


The  Saturday  Club 


simple  meetings  of  the  Atlantic  Club  were  not  long  continued.  At 
increasing  intervals,  however,  the  publishers  gave  notable  ban- 
quets to  the  growing  company  of  the  magazine's  contributors. 

The  men  who  brought  the  Saturday  and  the  Magazine  Club,  — 
later,  Atlantic  Club,  —  respectively,  into  actual  existence,  but  with 
quite  differing  purposes,  must  now  receive  their  due  credit. 

Of  Horatio  Woodman,  who  really  brought  the  Saturday  Club 
into  being,  Mr.  F.  B.  Sanborn  tells  that  he  came  to  Boston  from 
New  Hampshire,  1  was  a  friend  of  the  Littlehale  family  of  whom 
Mrs.  Ednah  Cheney  was  one,  and  was  introduced  by  her  to  Mr. 
Alcott.  Very  likely  also  Mrs.  Cheney  introduced  him  to  Emer- 
son. Mr.  Woodman  was  a  member  of  the  Suffolk  Bar;  he  was  a 
bachelor,  and  had  rooms  probably  first  at  the  Albion  Hotel  on 
Tremont  Street,  where  Houghton  and  Dutton's  great  store  now 
stands;  certainly,  later,  at  Parker's  hotel. 

Mr.  Woodman  loved  the  society  of  men  of  letters,  and  was  in 
the  position  and  had  the  skill  to  bring  them  together  now  and  then 
for  a  cheerful,  leisurely  dinner  at  a  public  house.  From  the  testi- 
mony of  Mr.  Dana's  journal,  confirmed  in  almost  every  respect 
by  Mr.  Samuel  G.  Ward  in  conversation  with  Mr.  Charles  F. 
Adams,  Jr.,  when  he  was  writing  Dana's  life,  the  substance  of 
the  following  account  of  the  beginnings  of  the  Saturday  Club  is 
drawn.  Mr.  Emerson  very  often  left  his  study  in  Concord  on  a 
Saturday  to  go  to  the  Athenaeum  Library,  call  on  friends,  or  see  his 
publishers  on  business.  He  was  likely  to  drop  in  at  the  original 
"Corner  Bookstore"  of  Ticknor  and  Fields  on  the  corner  of 
Washington  and  School  Streets,  and  Woodman  would  find  him 
there,  ask  him  where  he  was  going  to  lunch,  and  suggest  one  of 
the  good  inns  near  by.  Presently  finding  that  Emerson,  with  the 
aid  of  his  intimate  but  much  younger  friend,  Sam  G.  Ward,  had 
in  mind  the  formation  of  a  social  dining  club  of  friends,  men  of 
various  gifts  and  attractions.  Woodman  worked  gradually  toward 
the  realization  of  this  hope,  naturally  in  such  a  way  as  would  in- 
clude himself.  He  had  an  undoubted  gift  to  manage  the  details  of 
such  a  club. 

^  Mr.  Woodman  was  born  and  brought  up  in  Buxton,  Maine,  but  may  perhaps  have 
taught  school  in  New  Hampshire. 


"The  Saturday  Club  is  Born         1 3 

Very  probably  other  extempore  dinners,  arranged  by  Woodman, 
may  have  taken  place  earlier,  but  this  letter  is  the  first  record 
which  I  have  found.  About  a  year  before  the  Saturday  Club  was 
really  born,  Dana  wrote  in  his  diary  for  1854:  — 

"December  16.  Dined  at  the  Albion  in  a  select  company  of 
Emerson,  Lowell,  Alcott,  Goddard  (of  Cincinnati,  lecturer),  an 
English  gentleman  named  Cholmondely  (Oxford  graduate),  a 
clever  and  promising  Cambridge  student  named  Sanborn,  and 
Woodman.  It  was  very  agreeable.  Emerson  is  an  excellent  dinner- 
table  man,  always  a  gentleman,  never  bores,  or  preaches,  or  dic- 
tates, but  drops  and  takes  up  topics  very  agreeably,  and  has  even 
skill  and  tact  in  managing  his  conversation.  So,  indeed,  has  Alcott; 
and  it  is  quite  surprising  to  see  these  transcendentalists  appear- 
ing as  men  of  the  world." 

In  a  later  entry,  in  his  diary,  Mr.  Dana,  gives  further  evidence 
of  these  loose  gatherings  for  Saturday  dinners  which  Woodman 
made  and  managed  pleasantly. 

Another  of  these  informal  premonitions  appears  in  the  following 
letter  from  Woodman  to  Emerson:  — 

Boston,  June  5,  1855. 
Dear  Mr.  Emerson:  — 

At  the  Revere  House  on  the  evening  when  the  surges  from  our 
end  of  the  table  broke  in  foam  over  you,  Mr.  Agassiz  and  Mr. 
Peirce  agreed  to  join  you,  Mr.  Whipple,  and  me  over  a  beefsteak 
at  Mrs.  Meyer's  ^  at  half  past  2,  on  Saturday  next,  when  you 
said  you  would  be  there.  Unless  I  hear  from  you,  I  shall  surely 
expect  you,  because  otherwise  it  would  be  getting  them  by  false 
pretences. 

They  have  such  genuine  and  undogmatizing  value,  —  Mr. 
Agassiz,  especially,  dips  {sic\  so  naturally  and  swallow-like  from 
what  is  profound  to  the  highest  trifle,  that  we  ought  to  be  thank- 
ful to  meet  them. 

Really,  I  thought,  as  I  talked  with  each  in  turn  the  other  night, 

*  This  was  a  good  restaurant  on  Court  Street  nearly  opposite  Hanover  Street.  Mrs. 
Meyer  was  said  to  have  been  the  sister  of  the  elder  Papanti,  who  taught  three  generations 
of  Bostonians  to  dance. 


14  The  Saturday  Club 

of  Imagination,  how  few  literary  men  among  us  had  so  much  of  it 
and  could  talk  so  closely  and  instructively  of  it. 

Perhaps  Richard  H.  Dana,  Jr.,  may  join,  and  of  course  any  one 
else  you  think  of,  except  that  the  stock  of  provisions  may  be  short 
without  previous  notice,  if  many  more  are  invited. 

Always  truly  yours, 

Horatio  Woodman. 

But  now  comes  on  the  scene  Woodman's  competitor,  with  a 
more  serious  end  in  view,  which  handicapped  his  desired  club  from 
the  first;  a  man  bright  and  genial  and  loyal,  but  who  had  a  rather 
disappointing  ending  of  his  life,  though  not,  like  the  other,  sad 
and  sudden.  Our  member,  and  my  associate,  Mr.  Bliss  Perry, 
thus  pleasantly  speaks  of  Francis  H.  Underwood:  "A  graceful 
writer,  and  a  warm-hearted,  enthusiastic  associate  of  men  more 
brilliant  than  himself.  Underwood's  name  is  already  shadowed 
by  .  .  .  forgetfulness.  .  .  .  But  he  played  the  literary  game  de- 
votedly, honestly,  and  always  against  better  men.  ...  In  1853, 
when  he  was  but  twenty-eight,  he  conceived  the  notion  of  a  new 
magazine.  Some  such  project  had  long  been  in  the  air,  as  is  evi- 
dent from  the  letters  of  Emerson,  Alcott,  and  Lowell,  but  Un- 
derwood was  the  first  to  crystallize  it.  It  was  to  be  anti-slavery 
in  politics,  but  was  to  draw  for  general  contributions  upon  the 
best  writers  of  the  country.  .  .  ."  The  contributors,  Mr.  Perry 
says,  had  already  promised,  and  Underwood  should  have  enjoyed 
the  full  credit  of  the  enterprise.  "Then  came,  alas,  the  hour  of 
bitter  disappointment.  J.  P.  Jewett  and  Co.  failed,  and  the  maga- 
zine plans  were  abandoned.  .  .  ." 

Mr.  Underwood  then  became  associated  with  the  firm  of  Phillips 
&  Sampson  and  made  himself  valuable  as  their  literary  adviser 
and  reader.  Never  letting  drop  from  his  mind  his  dream  of  a 
magazine  in  Boston  superior  to  any  that  the  country  had  yet 
seen,  he  lost  no  opportunities  of  meeting  with  the  New  England 
authors,  and  it  was  he  who  organized,  somewhat  loosely,  a  dining 
club  meeting  at  Parker's  on  Saturday  afternoons.  This  jovial 
letter  from  Professor  Felton  of  Harvard  College  shows  how  early 
these  dinners  began :  — 


"The  Saturday  Club  is  Born         1 5 

Cambridge,  Friday,  Feb.  13,  1856. 
In  bed. 

My  dear  Underwood  :  — 

I  am  much  obliged  to  you  for  taking  the  trouble  of  informing 
me  of  to-morrow's  dinner  —  but  it  is  like  holding  a  Tantalus' 
cup  to  my  lips.  I  returned  ill  ten  days  ago  from  Washington,  hav- 
ing taken  the  epidemic  that  is  raging  there  at  the  present  moment 
and  have  been  bed-ridden  ever  since,  living  on  a  pleasant  vari- 
ety of  porridge  and  paregoric.  Yesterday  I  was  allowed  to  nibble 
a  small  mutton-chop,  but  it  proved  too  much  for  me  and  —  here 
I  am  worse  than  ever.  I  have  no  definite  prospect  of  dining  at 
Parker's  within  the  present  century.  My  porridge  is  to  be  reduced 
to  gruel,  and  paregoric  increased  to  laudanum.  I  am  likely  to 
be  brought  to  the  condition  of  the  student  in  Canning's  play; 

"Here  doomed  to  starve  on  water  gru- 
El  never  shall  I  see  the  U- 
Niversity  of  Gottingen." 

And  never  dine  at  Parker's  again!  I  hope  you  will  have  a  jovial 
time;  may  the  mutton  be  tender  and  the  goose  not  tough;  may  the 
Moet  sparkle  like  Holmes'  wit;  May  the  carving  knives  be  as 
sharp  as  Whipple's  criticism;  May  the  fruits  be  as  rich  as  Emer- 
son's philosophy;  May  good  digestion  wait  on  appetite  and  Health 
on  both  —  and  I  pray  you  think  of  me  as  the  glass  goes  round. 

Horizontally,  but  ever  cordially. 
Your  friend, 

C.  C.  Felton. 

In  the  above  letter  appear  the  names  of  four  early  members  of 
the  Saturday  Club. 

In  August  of  that  year,  Emerson  writes  to  Underwood,  saying : — 

I  am  well  contented  that  the  Club  should  be  solidly  organized, 
and  grow.  I  am  so  irregularly  in  town,  that  I  dare  not  promise 
myself  as  a  constant  member,  yet  I  live  so  much  alone  that  I  set 
a  high  value  on  my  social  privileges,  and  I  wish  by  all  means  to 
retain  the  right  of  an  occasional  seat. 

So  with  thanks  and  best  wishes, 
Yours, 

R.  W.  Emerson. 


1 6  The  Saturday  Club 

This  letter,  while  showing  good-will  to  an  authors'  club,  seems  a 
little  evasive,  and  the  reason  would  not  be  far  to  seek,  for  the  long- 
hoped-for  freer  gathering,  of  friends,  with  no  spectral  obligations 
to  furnish  poems,  essays,  contributions  serious  or  gay,  haunting 
the  banquet-room,  was  now  either  already  provided  or  close  at 
hand.  The  awkwardness  of  much  the  same  group  of  friends  com- 
ing to  meet,  and  on  Saturdays,  at  the  same  place,  under  different 
auspices,  was  apparent.  Naturally  the  friends  preferred  to  with- 
hold fixed  allegiance  while  they  yet  might. 

Mr.  Underwood,  as  a  man,  they  liked,  but  he  was  also  an  eager 
agent  for  a  publishing  house,  and  possessed  with  a  design.  Yet 
they  were  willing  to  come  occasionally  to  a  dinner,  where  the  new 
magazine,  which  many  of  them  had  desired  as  much  as  he,  was 
to  be  made  possible. 

Less  than  three  weeks  after  the  letter  to  Underwood  given 
above,  Emerson  writes  to  Ward  of  their  long-wished-for  club  as 
though  already  existing:  — 

September  12,  1856. 
By  all  means  do  not  forget 't  is  the  last  Saturday  of  each  month. 
For  the  scot  —  I  always  pay  through  Woodman. 

Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  later  years,  writing  of  the  Saturday  Club, 
says  that  because  of  its  being  composed  of  literary  men  and  coming 
into  being  at  about  the  same  time  with  the  establishment  of  the 
Atlantic^  "The  magazine  and  the  Club  have  often  been  thought 
to  have  some  organic  connection,  and  the  'Atlantic  Club'  has 
been  spoken  of  as  if  there  was  or  had  been  such  an  institution,  but 
it  never  existed."  ^  Mr.  Underwood  wrote  to  the  Doctor  protest- 
ing against  this  statement.  "You  remember,"  he  writes,  "that  the 
contributors  met  for  dinner  regularly.  It  was  a  voluntary  in- 
formal association.  The  invitations  and  reminders  were  from  my 
hand,  as  I  conducted  the  correspondence  of  the  magazine.  I  have 
hundreds  of  letters  in  reply,  and  it  is  my  belief  that  the  associ- 
ation was  always  spoken  of  either  as  the  Atlantic  Club  or  the 
Atlantic  Dinner."    The  Doctor  stuck  to  his  assertion,  but  Mr. 

^  Holmes's  Life  of  Emerson,  p.  221. 


^he  Saturday  Club  is  Born         1 7 

Underwood  was  right.  It  must  be  remembered  that  Dr.  Holmes's 
memory  naturally  was  not  surely  to  be  trusted  at  his  age,  and  that 
he  was  not  among  those  who  planned  the  Club,  nor  a  member  until 
its  second  year,  when  the  Atlantic  scheme  had  passed  from  the 
state  of  an  enterprise  to  that  of  a  certainty. 

Mr.  Underwood,  who  had  become  literary  adviser  of  the  firm 
of  Phillips  &  Sampson  when,  after  the  death  of  Mr.  Sampson, 
Mr.  Lee  had  been  taken  into  the  firm,  had  inoculated  this  gentle- 
man thoroughly  with  his  magazine  yearning.  Then,  Mr.  Bliss 
Perry  says,  in  his  generous  paper  on  "The  Editor  who  never  was 
Editor"  in  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  number  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly^  that  It  was  Underwood  who  pleaded  with  the  reluctant 
head  of  the  firm  of  Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.  As  "our  literary  man," 
in  Mr.  Phillips's  comfortable  proprietary  phrase,  "Underwood 
sat  at  the  foot  of  the  table  among  the  guests  at  that  well-known 
dinner  where  the  project  of  the  magazine  was  first  made  public." 
In  Mr.  Scudder's  Life  of  Lowell  is  given  the  interesting  letter  of 
Mr.  Phillips  to  his  niece,  in  which  he  tells  of  this  festival  which 
resulted  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  His  invited  guests  were,  in  the 
order  in  which  he  names  them,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Motley,  Holmes,  James  Elliot  Cabot,  and  Mr.  Underwood.  They 
sat  five  hours;  Mr.  Lowell  accepted  the  editorship,  making  It 
a  condition  that  Holmes  should  contribute;  he  (Holmes)  promised, 
and,  withal,  named  the  newborn  infant.  Underwood,  eager  in  the 
enterprise,  soon  visited  England  to  secure  the  services  of  the  first 
British  contributors.  Recognizing  that  Lowell's  name  was  of  the 
highest  importance  to  the  success  of  the  new  venture.  Underwood 
loyally  accepted  the  position  of  his  "  office  editor,"  as  assistant  to 
a  more  gifted  chief.  Mr.  Underwood  was  so  useful  and  active  as 
assistant,  until  about  i860,  that  many  of  the  contributors  sup- 
posed him  to  be  the  editor.^  It  is  probable,  and  the  inference  may 
be  drawn  from  what  Lowell  said  in  the  first  number  of  the  Atlantic^ 

*  Whatever  may  have  been  the  reason  of  the  severing  of  Mr.  Underwood's  connectioa 
with  the  Atlantic,  it  is  certain  that  his  steady  purpose,  through  discouragement,  was  a 

Erime  factor  in  its  coming  to  birth.  His  modest  loyalty  and  his  courtesy  must  have  made 
im  in  its  infancy  an  important  help  to  his  sterner  chief  in  dealing  with  contributors.  He 
won  lasting  esteem  from  them.  Here  is  one  of  several  kind  letters  that  came  to  him,  in  his 
later  days,  as  Consul  in  Glasgow  and  in  Edinburgh,  and  as  author:  — 


1 8  "The  Saturday  Club 

that  there  were  a  few  more  dinners  that  might  have  been  called 
"of  the  Atlantic  Club,"  but  the  Saturday  Club  displaced  these, 
and  the  later  Atlantic  banquets  were  given  by  the  publishers. 
Of  these  an  interesting  account  was  given  by  Mr.  Arthur  Oilman 
in  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  number  of  the  magazine,^  and  one 
given  to  Whittier  will  be  mentioned  later  in  this  book. 

Mr.  Emerson's  journal  bears  amusing  witness  to  the  existence  of 
this  second  and  temporary  club.  He  wrote,  "We  had  a  story  one 
day  of  a  meeting  of  the  Atlantic  Club  when,  the  copies  of  the  new 
number  of  the  Atlantic  being  brought  in,  every  one  rose  eagerly 
to  get  a  copy,  and  then  each  sat  down  and  read  his  own  article.^"* 

This  perhaps  too  long  trial  of  the  case  of  the  Atlantic  Club  vs. 
the  Saturday  Club  may  be  properly  closed  by  the  following  de- 
cision by  a  man  of  law,  Mr.  John  Torrey  Morse,  in  his  excellent 
memoir  of  Dr.  Holmes:  "The  discussion  is  of  little  moment  unless 
perchance  this  Club  shall  become  picturesque  and  interesting  for 
posterity  as  did  the  Club  of  Johnson  and  Garrick  and  the  rest,  — 
which  I  fear  will  hardly  come  to  pass.  Certain  it  is  that  nearly  all 
the  frequent  (male)  contributors  to  the  magazine,  who  lived 
within  convenient  reach  of  the  Parker  House,  were  members  of 
the  Club,  or  doubtless  might  have  been  so  had  they  desired;  and 
that  for  a  long  while  a  multiplicity  of  nerves  and  filaments  tied 
the  magazine  and  the  Club  closely  together.  Equally  certain  it 
is  that,  from  the  outset,  a  few  members  of  the  Club  were  never 
contributors  to  the  magazine,  and  that  all  these  nerves  and  fila- 
ments have  long  ere  the  present  day  been  entirely  severed." 

50  Chestnut  St.,  Boston. 
April  IS,  1875. 
My  dear  Mr.  Underwood,  — 

...  I  wish  that  your  connection  with  the  Atlantic  could  have  been  continued  long 
enough  to  give  your  literary  powers  and  accomplishments  a  fair  chance  of  just  recogni- 
tion. It  is  for  the  interest  of  us  all  that  men  like  you  should  be  rated  for  what  they  are  worth. 
Harvard  College  and  its  social  allies  answer  a  very  good  purpose  in  defending  us  —  to  some 
extent  —  against  the  literary  clap-trap  and  charlatanry  which  prosper  so  well  throughout 
the  country;  but  those  who  are  neither  Harvard  men  nor  humbugs  may  be  said  to  be 
the  victims  of  their  own  merit,  having  neither  the  prestige  of  the  one  nor  the  arts  of  the 
other.  ... 

With  cordial  regards, 
Very  truly  yours, 

F.  Parkman. 

*  Atlantic  Dinners  and  Diners. 


'The  Saturday  Club  is  Born         19 

The  intending  and  the  formative  period  of  the  Saturday  Club 
comes  to  a  close  late  in  1855,  or  early  in  1856,  when  these  friends, 
drawn  together  by  affinity,  yet  their  wish  made  fact  by  the  ac- 
tivity of  an  admirer  outside  their  circle  whose  friendly  skill  in 
arranging  for  their  dinners  had  obliged  them,  —  some  of  them, 
too,  bringing  in  a  special  friend  by  common  consent,  —  began  to 
call  themselves  a  club,  as  yet  without  a  name.  Those  who  may  be 
called  undoubted  original  members,  as  so  considered  in  the  year 
1856,  given  in  alphabetical  order,  were  Louis  Agassiz,  Richard 
Henry  Dana,  Jr.,  John  Sullivan  Dwight,  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son, Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar,  James  Russell  Lowell,  John  Lo- 
throp  Motley,  Benjamin  Peirce,  Samuel  Gray  Ward,  Edwin  Percy 
Whipple,  Horatio  Woodman,  eleven  in  all.  Longfellow's  name 
does  not  appear  in  this  list  because  of  the  entry  in  his  journal  next 
year  as  follows:  "March  28th,  1857.  Dined  with  Agassiz  at  his 
club  which  he  wishes  me  to  join,  and  I  think  I  shall."  That  he 
joined  next  month  Is  evident  from  his  letter  to  "Tom"  Appleton, 
then  In  Europe,  written  May  14:  "We  have  formed  a  Dinner  Club, 
once  a  month,  at  Parker's.  Agassiz,  Motley,  Emerson,  Peirce, 
Lowell,  Whipple,  Sam  Ward,  Holmes,  Dwight  (J.  S.  Journal  of 
Music) J  Woodman  (Horatio,  a  member  of  the  Suffolk  Bar), 
myself,  and  yourself.  We  sit  from  three  o'clock  till  nine,  generally, 
which  proves  it  to  be  pleasant." 

In  writing  the  letter  he  forgot  Dana  and  Judge  Hoar,  mentioned 
Dr.  Holmes  who  had  been  included  as  a  member  at  the  last  meet- 
ing, and  tells  his  brother-in-law  that  he  too  Is  a  member.  All  this 
shows  the  truth  of  Mr.  Norton's  recollection  that  formal  elections 
were  not  held  nor  records  kept  in  the  first  year  or  two  of  this  ag- 
gregation of  friends  through  mutual  suggestion  and  consent.  As 
for  Appleton,  it  has  already  been  shown  that  Emerson  wrote  of 
him  to  Ward  in  1849  that  he  was  "desirable  in  the  superlative 
degree,"  but  that  then  he  supposed  him  preoccupied.  So  It  is 
evident  that  only  his  absence  in  Paris  at  this  time,  and  not  hav- 
ing consented,  prevented  Appleton's  assured  membership.  On  his 
return  he  was  enrolled.  Agassiz  and  Peirce  soon  had  the  satisfac- 
tion of  bringing  In  their  neighbour  and  friend.  Professor  Cornelius 
Conway  Felton. 


2  o  T'he  Saturday  Club 

Adding  Holmes  and  Felton,  and  counting  out  Appleton,  until 
his  return  and  acceptance,  we  may  say  that  the  Club,  agreed 
upon  as  such  by  the  friends,  in  the  informal  stage,  1855,  1856, 
and  1857,  numbered  fourteen.^  Dana  wrote  in  his  journal  that  the 
last  two  mentioned  members  were  chosen  on  the  first  vote  taken 
in  the  Club,  making  the  number  "fourteen,  as  many  as  we  wish  to 
have."  Mr.  Adams,  in  his  Lije  of  Dana,  expresses  his  belief, 
fortified  by  some  tradition  from  older  members,  that  the  matter 
lay  thus  in  Dana's  mind  because  he  thought  so,  but  doubts  whether 
the  others  did.  At  any  rate,  the  Club  in  a  few  years  doubled  its 
members,  showing  that  Dana  did  not  avail  himself  uncharitably 
of  his  blackball. 

^  Emerson,  in  a  notebook  in  which  he  wrote  of  his  friends,  sets  down  J.  Elliot  Cabot's 
name  among  those  chosen  in  1857.  Emerson  had  his  friend's  election  much  at  heart.  Very 
possibly  he  was  chosen  then,  but  did  not  accept.  Neither  Dana  nor  Longfellow  mentions 
Cabot  in  their  list  of  early  members  in  their  journals,  and  in  our  record-book  his  member- 
ship dates  from  1861. 


Chapter  III 

1856 

Quotque  aderant  vates  rebar  adesse  deos.^ 

Ovid 
And.  each  inspired  one  here  I'll  count  a  god. 

IT  seems  well  In  this  chapter  to  tell,  first,  in  what  classes  of 
men  the  original  fourteen  belonged;  then,  of  the  hostelry 
where  they  always  met;  and  last,  to  try  to  describe  them  one  by 
one. 

Giving  the  men  of  letters,  as  most  numerous,  the  first  mention, 
there  were  four  poets,  one  historian,  one  essayist,  one  biologist  and 
geologist,  one  mathematician  and  astronomer,  one  classical  scholar, 
one  musical  critic,  one  judge,  two  lawyers,  and  one  banker.  This 
classification  is  rude.  Three  of  the  poets  were  essayists;  among 
the  men  of  letters  the  professions  were  represented,  for  Holmes 
had  been  a  practising  physician,  Emerson  and  Dwight  had  been 
clergymen.  Lowell  and  Motley,  later,  represented  their  country 
in  European  Courts,  and  Dana  refused  such  an  opportunity;  Judge 
Hoar  became  Attorney-General  of  the  United  States,  and  Felton 
became  President  of  Harvard  University,  in  which  Agassiz,  Long- 
fellow, Lowell,  and  Peirce  were  professors.  Peirce  was  the  Super- 
intendent of  the  Coast  Survey.  Ward,  although  the  representative 
of  a  great  English  banking  house,  had  marked  artistic  and  literary 
gifts. 

Very  early,  after  the  experimental  gatherings  at  the  Albion,  the 
meeting-place  where  dinners  were  held  was  either  the  small  front 
room  on  the  second  floor  of  "Parker's,"  or,  when  the  Club  grew 
larger,  the  large  front  room  just  west  of  It.  The  long  windows  looked 
out  on  the  statue  of  Franklin,  —  what  a  valuable  member  he 
would  have  made,  had  Time  allowed  it!  —  In  the  open  grounds  of 
the  City  Hall. 

^  This  is  the  motto  written  on  the  first  leaf  of  Emerson's  notebook  of  his  friends  which 
he  named  Gulistan. 


2  2  'The  Saturday  Club 

The  older  members  will  recall  the  two  notable  adornments  of 
the  original  dining-room.  These  were,  first,  an  oil  portrait  of  the 
genius  loci,  Harvey  D.  Parker  himself,  looking  on  with  masterly 
but  kindly  face  to  see  that  all  went  smoothly  and  creditably.  The 
picture  shows  no  trace  of  a  grief  that  rankled  in  his  mind.  "It  is 
written  of  him  by  Captain  John  Codman  that  he  once  said:  'I 
wish  they'd  pull  down  that  old  King's  Chapel  opposite.  Such  kind 
of  buildings  are  n't  no  use  these  times.'  If  he  ever  did  make  that 
philistinic  remark,  he  amply  atoned  for  it  in  his  will."  ^  For  the 
first  large  bequest  which  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  received  was 
$100,000  from  Mr.  Parker.  Behind  the  portrait  in  merit,  far  sur- 
passing it  in  ambitious  design,  was  a  painting,  an  apotheosis  (if 
such  is  possible  on  horseback)  of  Charles  L.  Flint,  President  of  the 
State  Agricultural  Society,  surrounded  by  its  (also  mounted)  offi- 
cers. The  picture  is  a  symphony  in  pink.  Mr.  Flint,  flushed  with 
pleasure,  gracefully  takes  off  his  hat  to  banks  of  fair  pink-faced 
ladies  in  pink  bonnets,  on  the  long  grand-stand.  Perhaps  the  pic- 
tures symbolized  the  roseate  future  of  the  farmer's  life  in  Massa- 
chusetts as  it  must  have  seemed  after  the  "Cattle  Show"  dinner 
and  oration  on  a  perfect  day  in  late  September  in  the  fifties.    ■ 

Here  gathered,  then,  with  more  regularity  of  attendance  than 
now,  the  friends,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  the  last 
Saturday  of  the  month,  very  possibly  through  the  summer  heats, 
for  summer  migrations  to  the  farther  North  Atlantic  shores,  or  to 
England,  Scotland,  or  Switzerland,  were  then  less  common  and 
easily  made  than  now.  Mr.  Woodman  very  kindly  assumed  the 
burden  of  the  business  arrangements  and  managed  the  feast.  He 
knew  well  how  to  do  this  acceptably,  and  seemed  to  have  a  singu- 
larly intimate  acquaintance  with  the  best  possibilities  of  Parker's 
larder.  The  charge  was  divided  among  the  members  present,  who 
paid  for  their  guests,  and  bills  were  sent  from  the  office.  If  few 
members  came,  and  absentees  forgot  to  send  notice,  the  charge 
was  sometimes  large.  I  remember  an  occasion  in  my  early  mem- 
bership when  three  only  came,  and  our  bills  were  nearly  seven 
dollars  apiece.  But  the  dinner  was  excellent  and  much  more  elab- 
orate than  the  lunch  of  the  present  day;  seven  courses  at  least,  with 

*  Boston  Transcript,  M&Tch  11,  igii. 


i856 


23 


sherry,  sauterne,  and  claret.  Any  one  who  wished  to  pledge  his 
neighbour  or  his  guest  in  champagne,  or  who  desired  Apollinaris 
for  his  digestion,  had  personally  to  pay  for  such  courtesy  or  indul- 
gence. The  cocktail  did  not  in  those  days  forerun  the  banquet, 
nor  yet  at  this  writing  has  it  appeared.  The  various  good  wines 
were  offered  at  suitable  times  "to  cheer  the  heart  of  man."  But 
the  immortals  of  that  goodly  company,  like  their  more  abstemi- 
ous successors  of  the  day,  held  with  old  Panard,  — 

"  Quand  on  boit  trop,  on  s'assoupit 
Et  on  tombe  en  delire; 
Buvons  pour  avoir  de  I'esprit, 
Et  non  pour  le  detruire." 

The  company  was  so  well  chosen  and  of  such  varied  gifts  that 
no  one,  on  those  more  peaceful  Saturday  afternoons  of  sixty  years 
ago,  was  restlessly  thinking  of  other  engagements.  All  but  the 
Concord  men  lived  within  five  miles  of  the  State  House,  and 
reluctant  early  departure  of  these  for  their  last  home  train  was 
soon  made  needless  by  the  kind  action  of  one  of  them,  as  later  told. 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  had  from  Mr.  Sam  G.  Ward  these 
memories  from  the  early  days  of  the  Club: — 

"Agassiz  always  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table  by  native  right  of 
his  huge  good-fellowship  and  intense  enjoyment  of  the  scene,  his 
plasticity  of  mind  and  sympathy.  ...  I  well  remember  amongst 
other  things  how  the  Club  would  settle  itself  to  listen  when  Dana 
had  a  story  to  tell.  Not  a  word  was  missed,  and  those  who  were 
absent  were  told  at  the  next  Club  what  they  had  lost.  Emerson 
smoked  his  cigar  and  was  supremely  happy,  and  laughed  under 
protest  when  the  point  of  the  story  was  reached." 

Referring  to  this  same  early  and  golden  period.  Dr.  Holmes 
wrote :  — 

"At  that  time  you  would  have  seen  Longfellow  invariably  at 
one  end  —  the  east  end  —  of  the  long  table,  and  Agassiz  at  the 
other.  Emerson  was  commonly  near  the  Longfellow  end,  on  his 
left.  There  was  no  regularity,  however,  in  the  place  of  the  mem- 
bers. I  myself  commonly  sat  on  the  right-hand  side  of  Longfellow, 
so  as  to  have  my  back  to  the  windows;  I  think  Dana  was  more  apt 
to  be  on  the  other  side.  The  members  present  might  vary  from  a 


24  T^he  Saturday  Cluh 


dozen  to  twenty  or  more.  .  .  .  Conversation  was  rarely  general. 
There  were  two  principal  groups  at  the  ends  of  the  table.  The  most 
jovial  man  at  table  was  Agassiz;  his  laugh  was  that  of  a  big  giant. 
There  was  no  speechifying,  no  fuss  of  any  kind  with  constitution 
and  by-laws  and  other  such  encumbrances.  I  do  not  remember 
more  than  two  Infractions  of  the  general  rule  of  quiet  and  decorum, 
—  these  were  when  Longfellow  read  a  short  poem  on  one  of  Agas- 
slz's  birthdays,  and  the  other  when  I  read  a  poem  in  honor  of 
Motley,  who  was  just  leaving  for  Europe." 

Dana,  though  he  had  been  a  member  from  the  early  gathering, 
omitted  to  record  that  fact  at  the  time.  He  writes  in  his  diary  on 
August  6,  1857:  "I  believe  I  have  nowhere  mentioned  the  Club. 
It  has  become  an  important  and  much  valued  thing  to  us." 

Dana's  social  gift,  especially  as  a  raconteur^  was  an  important 
asset  for  the  Club,  the  more  because  of  the  difficulties  of  general 
talk  at  so  large  a  table.  But,  in  the  summer  of  1856,  soon  after  the 
Club  crystallized,  he  made  his  first  visit  to  Europe,  a  short  one, 
which,  however,  accounts  for  his  late  mentioning  of  the  monthly 
festival,  which  he  valued.  But  the  Club  reaped  the  harvest  of 
this  on  his  return. 

In  his  youth,  Dana  had  known  the  sea  as  a  place  of  constant  toil 
and  danger  —  and  loved  It.  Now,  twenty  years  later,  after  brave 
and  effective  work,  as  a  lawyer  and  as  a  good  citizen,  he  sailed  for 
England,  a  calm  passenger  on  a  Cunard  steamer.  His  reactions 
when  the  time  came,  shown  in  his  diary,  are  interesting.  He  writes  : 
"Actually  bound  to  Europe,  —  the  Europe  of  my  dreams,  that 
I  hardly  dared  believe  I  should  ever  see.  But  now  that  the  time 
has  come,  I  am  so  Intensely  Interested  In  my  own  country,  In  the 
impending  struggle  between  the  free  classes  and  the  slave  power, 
that  I  cannot  conjure  up  a  thought  of  England.  Her  history,  her 
cathedrals,  her  castles,  her  nooks  and  corners,  all  lose  their  signi- 
ficance, and  have  no  hold  on  my  feelings  or  fancy."  He  did  not 
realize  how  soon  and  strongly  these  would  awaken. 

And  first  the  sea  rejoiced  his  heart.  His  journal  fairly  shouts: — 
'  "What  is  like  the  sea  for  healthfulness,  vigour,  and  joy!  And 
to  me,  beyond  all  this,  the  Infinite  delight  of  freedom  from  all 
labour,  the  certainty  of  nothing  to  do,  the  certainty  that  there  is 


i856 


25 


nothing  I  can  do.  No  matter  how  many  strings  you  have  left 
flying,  no  matter  what  occur  to  you  as  things  you  might  do  or 
ought  to  do,  you  banish  and  forget  them  all  in  the  knowledge  that 
miles  of  blue  water,  —  a  mare  dissociabile  —  makes  them  impos- 
sible.  To  me,  this  is  an  unspeakable  delight." 

But  a  greater  was  to  follow;  after  rest,  most  restful  recreation. 
For  if  ever  an  American  was  born  to  enjoy  England  it  was  Dana. 
In  his  humanities  and  in  his  professional  contests  and  political 
course  he  had  shown  himself,  and  always  did,  democratic  in  the 
fine  sense,  a  loyal  American.  But  in  his  tastes,  his  social  predi- 
lections, his  choice  of  form  of  worship,  he  seemed  more  akin  to 
Englishmen  than  to  his  own  people.  Indeed,  it  might  seem  to  him 
that,  after  a  long  American  dream,  the  ancestral  blood  in  him  had 
awakened  at  last  in  its  own  country.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  read  how 
England,  with  Stratford  as  its  crowning  delight,  satisfied  his  soul, 
daily,  and  at  each  new  turn. 

In  this  connection  it  is  pleasant  to  recall  that  Longfellow,  at 
this  period,  was,  like  Dana,  in  the  acute  joy  of  freedom  from 
routine  duties,  —  for  in  1854  he  had  resigned  his  professorship,  — 
and  this  was  heightened  a  few  months  later  by  the  selection  of 
Lowell  as  his  successor,  though  many  desired  the  place.  It  might 
seem  that  Lowell's  course  on  Poetry,  just  then  delivered  at  the 
Lowell  Institute,  which,  in  its  quality,  was  a  surprise  and  a 
triumph,  won  him  this  appointment.  His  friends  gave  him  a  din- 
ner at  the  Revere  House  just  before  he  started  on  his  year  of  study 
abroad.  The  company  included  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  members  of 
the  Club,  just  then  about  to  take  form.  Norton  thus  describes 
this  dinner  in  a  letter:  — 

"Longfellow  was  at  the  head  of  the  table  and  Felton  sat  oppo- 
site to  him.  Lowell  was  at  Longfellow's  right  hand  and  Emerson  at 
his  left  —  and  the  rest  of  the  party  was  made  up  of  Holmes,  and 
Tom  Appleton,  and  Parsons,  and  Agassiz  and  Peirce,  and  eight 
or  ten  others,  all  clever  men.  Longfellow  proposed  Lowell's  health 
in  such  a  happy  and  appropriate  way  as  to  strike  the  true  key- 
note of  the  feeling  of  the  time.  Then  Holmes  read  a  little  poem  of 
farewell  that  he  had  written,  and  then,  after  an  interval  filled  up 
with  conversation,  he  produced  two  letters  addressed  to  Lowell, 


2  6  T'he  Saturday  Club 

one  from  the  Reverend  Homer  Wilbur  and  the  other  from  Hosea 
Biglow.  They  were  very  cleverly  done,  full  of  humour  and  fun, 
and  made  great  shouts  of  laughter,  which  continued  all  through 
the  evening  to  roll  up  in  great  waves  from  the  end  of  the  table 
where  Felton  and  the  best  laughers  generally  were  seated.  It  was 
really  a  delightful,  genial,  youthful  time,  and  had  Lowell  only 
just  come  home,  instead  of  being  just  about  to  go  off,  nothing 
would  have  been  wanting."  ^ 

The  reference  made,  here  and  earlier,  to  the  usual  nearness  of 
Longfellow  and  Emerson  at  table,  is  interesting,  for  one  wonders 
that  this  seldom  happened  elsewhere.  Their  homes  were  but 
thirteen  miles  apart  by  the  turnpike.  But  at  first  the  two  poets 
faced  east  and  west.  Longfellow,  born  on  the  edge  of  the  great 
pine  forest,  in  his  eager  youth  sailed  for  the  Old  World.  Her 
beauty  and  her  story  won  his  love,  held  most  of  his  allegiance  for 
life.  Her  ancient  culture,  her  ripeness  and  smoothness  even  in  her 
ruins,  her  veiling  and  colouring  atmosphere  still  haunted  him. 
His  constant  studies  through  his  professorship,  always  continued,, 
sustained  this  influence.  But  Emerson  had  hastened  home  from 
his  first  visit  to  Europe  to  live  close  to  the  pine  trees,  and  daily 
listen  and  record  their  song 

Of  tendency  through  endless  ages, 
Of  star-dust  and  star-pilgrimages. 

At  that  period  he  felt  the  need  of  a  Bardic  improvisation  of  the 
instant  thought,  — 

The  undersong, 
The  ever  old,  the  ever  young. 

Later,  with  more  sensitive  ear,  he  kept  the  verses  by  him  till  they 
mellowed.  So  the  two  poets  worshipping  the  goddess,  but  from 
different  sides,  were  not  quite  drawn,  one  to  another.  Yet  each 
valued  the  other  as  a  man  standing  for  beauty,  but  also  for  right 
in  troublous  times.  Longfellow's  mention  of  Emerson  is  always 
kindly.  In  the  autumn  of  1845,  returning  from  the  introductory 
lecture  in  Emerson's  course  on  "Great  Men,"  he  wrote,  "Not  so 
much  as  usual  of  the  'sweet  rhetorlcke'  which  usually  falls  from 
his  lips,  and  many  things  to  shock  the  sensitive  ear  and  heart."  He 


ISS6 


2  J 


spoke  well  of  the  lecture  on  "Goethe,"  adding,  "There  is  a  great 
charm  about  him  —  the  Chrysostom  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne  of 
the  day."  In  1849,  delighted  with  the  lecture  "Inspiration,"  he 
likened  Emerson  to  a  temple  portico:  "We  stand  expectant,  wait- 
ing for  the  High  Priest  to  come  forth."  A  gentle  wind  coming  from 
it  moves  the  blossoms,  then  down  the  green  fields  the  grasses  bend, 
"and  we  ask,  'When  will  the  High  Priest  come  forth  and  reveal  to 
us  the  truth?'  and  the  disciples  say,  'He  has  already  gone  forth 
and  is  yonder  in  the  meadows.'  'And  the  truth  he  was  to  reveal?' 
*It  is  Nature,  nothing  more.'" 

'•  In  May  of  the  same  year,  Emerson  thanked  Longfellow  for  the 
gift  of  his  "Kavanagh,"  saying:  "It  had,  with  all  its  gifts  and 
graces,  the  property  of  persuasion,  and  of  inducing  the  severe 
mood  it  required.  ...  I  think  it  the  best  sketch  we  have  seen  in 
the  direction  of  the  American  novel.  .  .  .  One  thing  struck  me  as  I 
read,  —  that  you  win  our  gratitude  too  easily;  for  after  our  much 
experience  of  the  squalor  of  New  Hampshire  and  the  pallor  of 
Unitarianism,  we  are  so  charmed  with  elegance  in  an  American 
book  that  we  could  forgive  more  vices  than  are  possible  to  you." 
Hawthorne  wrote  at  the  same  time :  — 

"  It  is  a  most  precious  and  rare  book,  as  fragrant  as  a  bunch  of 
flowers,  and  as  simple  as  one  flower.  A  true  picture  of  life,  more- 
over." Emerson,  in  the  later  days  of  the  wishing  for  the  Club, 
before  its  birth,  writing  to  Longfellow,  to  thank  him  for  the  gift 
of  his  "Poems,"  adds:  "I  hope  much  in  these  days  from  Ward's 
cherished  project  of  a  club  that  shall  be  a  club.  It  seems  to  offer 
me  the  only  chance  I  dare  trust  of  coming  near  enough  to  you 
to  talk,  one  of  these  days,  of  poetry,  of  which,  when  I  read  your 
verses,  I  think  I  have  something  to  say  to  you.  So  you  must 
befriend  his  good  plan.  And  here  is  a  token:  I  send  you  my  new 
book;  and  will  not  have  any  sign  that  you  have  received  it  until 
the  first  club-meeting." 

In  the  letters  from  Emerson  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  they 
relate  to  Longfellow's  American,  not  Old-World  themes.  Thus  he 
welcomes  the  gift  of  "Hiawatha":  "I  have  always  one  foremost 
satisfaction  in  reading  your  books,  —  that  I  am  safe.  I  am,  in  va- 
riously skilful  hands,  but  first  of  all  they  are  safe  hands.  However, 


2  8  T^he  Saturday  Club 

I  find  this  Indian  poem  .  .  .  sweet  and  wholesome  as  maize;  very 
proper  and  pertinent  for  us  to  read,  and  showing  a  kind  of  manly 
sense  of  duty  in  the  poet  to  write.  ...  I  found  in  the  last  cantos  a 
pure  gleam  or  two  of  blue  sky,  and  learned  thence  to  tax  the  rest 
of  the  poem  as  being  too  abstemious," 

All  through  Longfellow's  journal,  from  his  first  coming  to  Cam- 
bridge, his  love  and  honour  for  Charles  Sumner  appear,  and  en- 
dured to  the  endu  Longfellow  received  him  at  his  home  like  a 
brother  before  his  entry  into  political  life.  After  he  went  to  Wash- 
ington, long  and  affectionate  letters  constantly  passed  between 
them.  Longfellow  was  happy  and  proud  of  his  friend's  broad 
statesmanship,  and  high  courage  in  a  cause,  even  in  the  North 
but  slowly  gaining  strength,  disregarding  constant  danger.  Had 
Sumner  lived  in  Boston,  he  would  almost  surely  have  been  in- 
cluded among  the  early  members  of  the  Club. 

And  now,  in  the  May  following  its  gathering,  a  dastard's  as- 
sault on  Sumner,  writing  at  his  desk  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  —  well 
nigh  a  murder,  —  stirred  the  members,  most  of  whom  were,  then, 
his  new  friends,  very  deeply.  Longfellow,  in  his  journal,  fairly 
moans  in  his  distress  and  anxiety.  But  he  thankfully  tells  of  the 
reaction  which  this  deed  had  instantly  stirred  in  New  England, 
and  tells  with  great  comfort  of  one  instance.  In  the  early  days  of 
their  gathering  in  Cambridge,  Felton,  as  well  as  he,  had  been  a 
close  and  admiring  friend  of  Sumner.  But  the  slavery  issue  had 
divided  them.  Felton,  in  the  pro-slavery  Whig  camp,  blamed  his 
old  friend's  frontal  attacks  with  uncompromising  eloquence  on  the 
defenders  of  slavery,  North  and  South,  and  their  relations  were 
broken.  But  this  outrage  turned  the  tide.  Longfellow  gladly  writes 
in  his  journal.  May  24:  "Great  excitement  in  town  on  this  affair; 
and  to-night  a  great  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall.  At  dinner,  —  let  me 
record  it  to  his  honour,  —  Felton,  who  has  had  a  long  quarrel  with 
Sumner,  proposed  as  a  toast,  'The  reelection  of  Charles  Sumner.'" 
Next  day,  writing  to  Sumner  of  the  shock  and  sorrow  at  what  had 
befallen  him,  he  says,  "A  brave  and  noble  speech,  you  made;  never 
to  die  out  of  the  memories  of  men!  .  .  .  Ever,  and  never  so  much 
as  now,  yours." 


i856 


29 


And  now  to  attempt  some  picturing  of  the  Founders.  Their 
kind  faces,  strong,  quietly  serious,  or  humorous  or  gay,  some 
fortunate  few  of  us  can  call  up  before  the  inward  eye,  and  hear  for 
a  moment  their  far-off  voices.  Others,  as  youths,  have  known  or 
seen  some  of  them,  and  may  retain  dim  pictures  of  them  in  their 
last  days.  Happily,  good  sun-pictures  remain  of  all,  and  more  or 
less  successful  paintings  of  some  of  them. 

The  sketches  of  the  gifts  and  characteristics  of  the  first  eleven 
who  gathered,  with  important  points  in  their  history,  are  now 
given  in  alphabetical  order,  followed  soon  after  by  those  of  the 
three  friends  who  joined  them  in  1857. 

Those  chosen  in  1858  and  thereafter  will  be  noticed  in  due  order 
in  the  course  of  the  narrative. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

Among  the  names  by  which  the  Club  was  referred  to  by  outsiders 
when  its  fame  began  to  spread  was  "Agassiz's  Club."  It  might 
well  have  borne  the  name,  for  his  beaming  face,  his  expansive 
nature,  many-sided  knowledge,  charmingly  conveyed,  his  Swiss 
democracy  and  sincerity,  and  French  aplomb,  commanded  the 
love  and  admiration  of  all  the  company,  however  differing  in  tem- 
perament or  gifts. 

Jean  Louis  Rodolphe  Agassiz,  born  at  Mortier  in  French  Swit- 
zerland east  of  Lake  Neufchatel,  with  the  sure  instincts  and 
impelling  spirit  of  a  great  naturalist  from  boyhood,  shunning  all 
bypaths,  neglecting  all  obstacles,  even  poverty,  had,  when  all 
possible  resources  were  exhausted,  received,  through  Humboldt's 
kindly  influence,  a  subsidy  from  the  Prussian  Government  to  ex- 
plore in  America  in  1846.  Not  long  after  his  arrival.  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  secured  him  the  opportunity  to  give  a  course  of  lectures  at 
the  Lowell  Institute. 

His  own  enthusiasm  and  charming  taking  for  granted  the  In- 
terest In  his  remote  subject  of  an  audience  all  but  absolutely  igno- 
rant of  advancing  modern  science,  —  his  genial  face,  his  Interesting 
foreign  accent,  and  his  facile  blackboard  drawing,  —  won  the  game 
completely.  Mollusks,  radiates,  and  articulates  hitherto  unknown 
by  fashionable  ladles  and  gentlemen  (except  by  a  few  presentable 
representatives,  like  oysters,  starfish,  and  lobsters),  his  hearers, 
bewitched  for  an  hour,  found  as  interesting  as  historic  characters. 
It  was  the  same  with  country  Lyceum  audiences,  and  in  mansion 
or  cottage  he  won  the  hearts  of  his  entertainers.  Harvard  College 
capitulated  the  next  year.  Agassiz  was  appointed  Professor.  It 
was  a  fateful  moment,  for  In  the  presence  of  his  broad  views  and 
compelling  influence  it  could  not  long  continue  as  the  humble  and 
limited  college  which  it  had  been  for  two  hundred  years.  It  used 
to  be  said  that  the  government  of  the  College  rather  regarded  the 
Scientific  and  Medical  Schools  as  an  impertinence.  Agassiz  pre- 
sented the  idea  that  the  Undergraduate  Department  was  prepara- 


Louis  Agassiz  3  * 

tory,  and  the  Schools,  professional  and  scientific,  the  real  thing. 
Within  twenty  years  the  College,  under  a  young  and  fearless  Presi- 
dent, well  seconded  by  the  more  eager  spirits  in  the  Faculty, 
began  its  new  vigorous  growth,  to  become  indeed  a  University. 

In  Mr.  Emerson's  journal  in  the  late  autumn  of  1852  is  re- 
corded :  — 

"I  saw  in  the  cars  a  broad-featured,  unctuous  man,  fat  and 
plenteous  as  some  successful  politician,  and  pretty  soon  divined 
it  must  be  the  foreign  professor  who  has  had  so  marked  a  success 
in  all  our  scientific  and  social  circles,  having  established  unques- 
tionable leadership  in  them  all;  and  it  was  Agassiz." 

Longfellow  records  having  felt  Agassiz's  genial  charm  at  one 
of  their  first  meetings:  — 

"  February  3 rd,  1 847.  Dinner-party  (at  Mr.  Nathan  Appleton's) 
for  Agassiz.  .  .  .  The  recollection  of  the  pleasant  dinner  is  charm- 
ing. Agassiz  lounging  in  his  chair  or  pricking  up  his  ears,  eagerly 
listening  to  what  was  said.  .  .  .  From  our  end  of  the  table  I  heard 
Agassiz  extolling  my  description  of  the  glacier  of  the  Rhone  in 
Hyperion^  which  is  pleasant  in  the  mouth  of  a  Swiss  who  has  a 
glacier  theory  of  his  own." 

Dr.  James  Kendall  Hosmer,  for  many  years  Professor  in  Wash- 
ington University  of  St.  Louis,  a  classmate  and  friend  of  the 
younger  Agassiz  (H.U.  1855),  in  an  admirable  book  of  reminis- 
cences ^  thus  describes  the  father:  — 

"He  had  come  a  few  years  before  from  Europe,  a  man  in  his 
prime,  of  great  fame.  He  was  strikingly  handsome,  with  a  dome- 
like head  under  flowing  black  locks,  large,  dark,  mobile  eyes  set 
in  features  strong  and  comely,  and  with  a  well-proportioned  stal- 
wart frame.  At  the  moment  his  prestige  was  greater,  perhaps,  than 
that  of  any  other  Harvard  professor.  His  knowledge  seemed 
almost  boundless.  His  glacial  theory  had  put  him  among  the  geo- 
logical chiefs,  and,  as  to  animated  nature,  he  had  ordered  and  sys- 
tematized, from  the  lowest  plant  forms  up  to  the  crown  and  crea- 
tion, the  human  being.  Abroad  we  knew  he  was  held  to  be  an 
adept  in  the  most  difficult  fields,  and  now  in  his  new  environment 
he  was  pushing  his  investigations  with  passionate  zeal.    But  the 

*  The  Last  Leaf,  by  James  K.  Hosmer,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York. 


3  2  The  Saturday  Club 

boys  found  in  him  points  on  which  a  laugh  could  be  hung.  As  he 
strode  homeward  from  his  walks  in  the  outer  fields  or  marshes, 
we  eyed  him  gingerly,  for  who  could  tell  what  he  might  have  in 
his  pockets?  .  .  . 

"He  was  on  friendliest  terms  with  things  ill-reputed,  even  ab- 
horrent, and  could  not  understand  the  qualms  of  the  delicate.  He 
was  said  to  have  held  up  once,  in  all  innocence,  before  a  class  of 
school-girls  a  wriggling  snake.  The  shrieks  and  confusion  brought 
him  to  a  sense  of  what  he  had  done.  He  apologized  elaborately, 
the  foreign  peculiarity  he  never  lost  running  through  his  confusion. 
'Poor  girls,  I  vill  not  do  it  again.  Next  time  I  vill  bring  in  a  nice, 
clean  leetle  feesh.'  Agassiz  took  no  pleasure  in  shocking  his  class; 
on  the  contrary,  he  was  most  anxious  to  engage  and  hold  them.  .  .  . 
He  sought  no  title  but  that  of  teacher.  To  do  anything  else  was 
only  to  misuse  his  gift.  In  his  desk  he  was  an  inspirer,  but  hardly 
more  so  than  in  private  talk.  .  .  .  He  was  charmingly  affable, 
encouraging  our  questions,  and  unwearied  in  his  demonstrations. 
When  his  audience  was  made  up  from  people  of  the  simplest, 
...  he  exerted  his  powers  as  generously  as  when  addressing  a 
company  of  savants.  He  always  kindled  as  he  spoke,  and  with 
a  marvellous  magnetism  communicated  his  glow  to  those  who 
listened. 

"  I  have  seen  him  stand  before  his  class  holding  in  his  hand  the 
claw  of  a  crustacean.  In  his  earnestness  It  seemed  to  be  for  him 
the  centre  of  the  creation,  and  he  made  us  all  share  his  belief. 
Indeed,  he  convinced  us.  Running  back  from  it  in  an  almost 
infinite  series  was  the  many-ordered  life  adhering,  at  last  scarcely 
distinguishable  from  the  inorganic  matter  to  which  it  clung. 
Forward  from  it  again  ran  the  series  not  less  long  and  complicated, 
which  fulfilled  itself  at  last  in  the  brain  and  soul  of  man.  What  he 
held  in  his  hand  was  a  central  link.  His  colour  came  and  went, 
his  eyes  danced  and  his  tones  grew  deep  and  tremulous,  as  he  dwelt 
on  the  illimitable  chain  of  being.  With  a  few  strokes  on  the  black- 
board, he  presented  graphically  the  most  Intricate  variations.  He 
felt  the  sublimity  of  what  he  was  contemplating,  and  we  glowed 
with  him  from  the  contagion  of  his  fervour." 

John  T.  Morse  writes,  "Dr.  Holmes  had  a  great  admiration  for 


Louis  Agassiz  3  3 

Professor  Agassiz,  and  used  to  called  him  'Liebig's  Extract'  of  the 
wisdom  of  ages";  and  added,  "I  cannot  help  thinking  what  a  feast 
the  cannibals  would  have,  if  they  boiled  such  an  extract."  A 
gentleman  once  commented  very  unfavourably  upon  this  little 
jest,  explaining  with  more  than  British  gravity,  that  it  was  a  poor 
one,  because  cannibals  don't  care  for  wisdom,  and  would  only 
have  relished  Agassiz  because  he  was  plump! 

Francis  H.  Underwood  wrote:  "A  warm  friendship  sprang  up 
between  Agassiz  and  Longfellow.  They  were  attracted  by  similar 
tastes  and  by  common  cosmopolitan  culture.  There  was  In  the 
Swiss-Frenchman  a  breezier  manner  and  more  effervescence  of 
humour:  in  the  American  more  attention  to  the  minor  amenities 
and  social  forms;  but  they  agreed  heartily,  and  they  loved  each 
other  like  David  and  Jonathan.  Their  diverse  occupations  estab- 
lished a  pleasing  and  restful  counterpoise.  Longfellow  would  often 
take  a  look  through  the  microscope  in  Agasslz's  laboratory  when 
at  Nahant,  where  they  were  neighbours.  Agassiz,  In  his  turn,  en- 
joyed no  recreation  so  much  as  an  hour  In  Longfellow's  study 
where  the  talk  was  of  poetry  and  other  literary  topics."  Mr. 
Underwood  goes  on  with  a  statement,  remarkable  but  true,  as 
to  the  change  in  the  College  from  Puritan  tradition  and  usage 
brought  by  the  leaven  of  Agassiz.  "He  affected  the  Faculty  as 
well  as  the  students,  and  the  people  as  well  as  the  savants.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  show  the  full  significance  of  the  change  before  mentioned. 
One  feature  was  the  gradual  secularization  of  the  University.  A 
century  ago,  a  college  professor  was  Invariably  'the  Reverend' 
So-and-So.  A  clergyman,  to  be  sure,  may  be  also  a  chemist,  as- 
tronomer, or  philologist,  but  the  knowledge  of  theology  is  not  a 
prerequisite  for  the  work  of  the  laboratory  or  lecture-stand.  And 
the  most  devout  reader  will  probably  admit  that  a  faculty  like 
that  at  Harvard,  numbering  near  a  hundred,  composed  of  men  ab- 
solutely first  in  their  respective  studies.  Is  able  to  exert  an  influ- 
ence upon  the  large  body  of  undergraduates  which  no  purely 
clerical  circle  could  hope  to  equal.  Truth,  as  well  as  light,  has  been 
polarized  In  our  times."  .  .  . 

A  year  or  more  before  the  formation  of  the  Club,  Mr.  Agassiz 
had  established  a  private  school  for  girls  in  Cambridge,  to  help 


34  The  Saturday  Club 

him  in  funds  for  his  collections  for  the  Museum.  His  son  and 
daughter  were  his  admirable  helpers  in  the  school.  A  lady  who  was 
one  of  the  scholars  says:  "Mr.  Agassiz  gave  us  lectures  on  geology 
and  zoology.  All  the  girls  liked  to  hear  him.  Whether  or  no  we 
had  special  interest  in  his  subjects,  we  found  his  lectures  delight- 
ful. He  was  so  poetical,  so  grand,  so  reverent.  To  all  of  us  he 
was  always  friendly  and  cordial."  As  Emerson  said  of  him,  "He 
made  anatomy  popular  hy  the  aid  of  an  idea.^^ 

Rev.  Edward  Chipman  Guild,  the  Unitarian  Minister  of  Wal- 
tham,  said  in  his  later  years:  "I  have  always  wanted  to  see  some 
record  of  the  actual  effect  of  the  influence  of  Agassiz  upon  his 
pupils.  I  believe  it  would  be  found  that  it  extended  into  walks  of 
life  where  it  would  be  very  little  expected.  Habits  of  accuracy,  of 
enthusiasm,  and  self-sacrifice  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  systema- 
tic ways  of  arranging  things  in  the  mind  .  .  .  are  of  value  in  any 
position  or  career.  I  believe  that  Agassiz's  men  might  be  traced 
by  definite  signs  —  in  the  war,  in  politics,  in  the  ministry,  the 
law,  medicine,  manufacture;  and  I  am  prepared  to  believe  that,  if 
I  were  to  return  to  Waltham  ten  years  hence,  I  should  find  a  dif- 
ference in  those  households  where  the  wife  and  mother  had  been 
in  the  botany  class,  easily  distinguishing  them  from  any  others." 

For  Agassiz's  method  was  new;  often  disconcerting  to  his  stu- 
dents. They  came  expecting  information;  that  he  would  tell  them 
facts,  and  illustrate  them  on  the  specimens  in  the  Museum,  and 
these  they  were  to  commit  to  memory.  But  Agassiz  gave  the 
youth  a  specimen;  he  was  to  observe  it.  First,  and  mainly,  he 
must  learn  a  new  art,  —  to  see,  and  then  to  see  more,  then  to  com- 
pare, and  then  think  why. 

Agassiz  enjoyed  the  Club  and  was  the  life  of  his  end  of  the  table, 
where  he  presided.  Highly  vitalized,  quick-witted,  full  of  interest- 
ing matter,  affectionate  and  kindly,  he  was  in  the  best,  and  proper, 
sense  convivial,  good  to  live  with. 

Emerson,  always  on  the  alert  for  facts  and  laws  in  Nature, 
which  for  him  were  guiding  symbols,  delighted  in  this  new  friend. 
Agassiz  loved  to  impart  them,  perhaps  the  more  to  Emerson  for 
this  very  trait,  for  this  Swiss  student  of  Natural  History  had, 


Louis  Agassiz  35 

at  the  University  of  Munich,  attended  for  four  years  Schelling's 
lectures  on  the  relation  of  the  Real  and  the  Ideal.  Emerson  wrote 
in  his  journal:  "Agassiz  is  a  man  to  be  thankful  for;  always  cordial, 
full  of  facts,  with  unsleeping  observation,  and  perfectly  communi- 
cative. .  .  .  What  a  harness  of  buckram,  city  life  and  wealth  puts 
on  our  poets  and  literary  men.  .  .  .  Agassiz  is  perfectly  accessible; 
has  a  brave  manliness  which  can  meet  a  peasant,  a  mechanic,  or 
a  fine  gentleman  with  equal  fitness." 

By  these  qualities  this  foreigner  performed  what  in  those  days, 
might  almost  have  been  deemed  a  miracle;  his  personality  and 
earnest  eloquence  persuaded  the  farmers,  manufacturers,  shop- 
keepers, and  lawyers  of  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  to  ap- 
propriate the  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  his  Museum  of  Na- 
tural History.  Yet  there  were  brave  opponents.  The  utilitarian 
Puritan  was  there.  To  quote  from  memory  the  Daily  Advertiser' s 
report  of  a  debate,  —  one  legislator  defiantly  asked  why  should 
such  things  be, — "What  has  Agassiz  with  his  pickled  periwinkles 
and  polypuses  done  that  is  really  useful.?"  Instantly  a  liberal 
member  arose  and  said,  "The  religious  world  owes  him  a  debt  of 
gratitude  for  triumphantly  combating  that  new-fangled  and 
monstrous  teaching  that  we  are  descended  from  monkeys,"  — 
but  here  the  first  speaker  countered  by  crying  out,  "  I  thank  God 
that  I  have  only  to  go  to  His  word,  —  not  to  any  French  professor 
of  Atheism,  —  for  that!" 

But  Agassiz  was  religious.  He  had  found  In  the  Alps,  in  the  Ap- 
palachians, and  in  the  Florida  reef  God's  writing,  telling  to  who- 
soever could  read  It  the  age  of  the  world,  and  the  record  through 
aeons,  of  progressive  life  on  Its  surface  and  in  Its  depths,  so  authen- 
tically that  he  could  afford  to  neglect  the  recent  poem  of  Genesis. 
But  the  marks  of  design,  as  he  read  them  throughout  Nature, 
stirred  him  to  an  enthusiasm  which  was  worship,  and  to  his 
hearers  he  bore  witness  of  a  degree  of  living  faith  that  would  be 
a  comfort  to  many  ministers,  could  they  but  feel  it. 

And  Agassiz  was  no  foreigner.  He  was  by  his  expansive  nature 
a  citizen  of  the  world,  like  Humboldt,  who  recognized  his  young 
genius  and  sent  him  to  us  In  1846. 

When  as  a  boy-student  at  the  University  of  Munich,  Agassiz, 


3^  T^he  Saturday  Club 

with  his  friend  Dinkel,  a  young  artist,  watched  groups  of  their 
fellows  start  on  "empty  pleasure  trips,"  Agassiz  said:  "There 
they  go  —  their  motto  is  — '  Ich  gehe  mit  den  andern'; — I  will 
go  my  own  way,  Mr.  Dinkel,  and  not  alone.  I  will  be  a  leader  of 
others." 

To  quote  the  words  of  the  London  Quarterly  Review:  "Unex- 
pected events  rendered  it  possible  for  him  to  promote  that  eman- 
cipation of  'that  splendid  adolescent,'  a  nation  passing  from  child- 
hood to  maturity  with  the  faults  of  spoiled  children,  and  yet  with 
the  nobility  of  character  and  the  enthusiasm  of  youth.  The  wild 
year  of  1848  broke  the  ties  which  bound  the  Canton  of  Neufchatel 
to  the  Prussian  monarchy,  and  consequently  the  Neufchatelois 
Agassiz  found  himself  honourably  set  free  from  the  service  of  the 
Prussian  king."  The  Chair  of  Natural  History  in  the  Lawrence 
Scientific  School  with  a  salary  of  $1500  was  offered  him,  with 
much  liberty.  This  seasonable  offer  was  accepted.  As  soon  as  the 
term  was  over  he  went  with  his  students  to  the  Lake  Superior 
region,  and  in  succeeding  vacation  time  from  the  Lakes  to  the  Gulf 
on  scientific  tours,  lecturing  to  the  people  and  becoming  acquainted 
with  them  by  the  way,  everywhere  arousing  interest  in  science, 
and  regard  for  himself.  Early  in  his  stay  here,  his  wife,  a  refined 
and  serious  person,  but  long  an  invalid,  died  In  Switzerland.  He 
had  brought  Alexander  with  him  to  America. 

In  1850,  Agassiz  married  Elizabeth  Cary,  a  woman  of  great 
charm  and  a  fitting  mate  for  him.  She  made  a  happy  home  for 
him  and  Alexander,  and  the  two  daughters,  who  were  at  once 
brought  from  Switzerland.  Mrs.  Agassiz,  moreover,  helped  on 
her  husband's  project  for  a  school,  that  he  might  earn  money  for 
his  Museum,  and  she  took  an  interest  in  all  his  work,  doing  a  great 
part  of  his  writing,  and  gallantly  accompanying  him,  even  on  his 
deep-sea  dredging  expeditions.  At  first  they  lived  on  Oxford  Street 
in  Cambridge,  but  later  on  Quincy  Street.  Here  he  had  for  neigh- 
bours his  Intimate  friends  Felton  and  Pelrce,  associates  In  the 
College  as  in  the  Club. 

Mr.  Howells,  in  his  Literary  Friends,  wrote :  — 

"Agassiz,  of  course,  was  Swiss  and  Latin,  and  not  Teutonic,  but 
he  was  of  the  Continental  European  civilization,  and  was  widely 


Louis  Agassiz  37 

different  from  the  other  Cambridge  men  in  everything  but  love 
of  the  place.  'He  is  always  an  Europaer,'  said  Lowell  one  day, 
in  distinguishing  concerning  him;  and  for  any  one  who  had  tasted 
the  flavour  of  the  life  beyond  the  ocean  and  the  channel,  this  had 
its  charm.  Yet  he  was  extremely  fond  of  his  adopted  compatriots, 
and  no  alien  born  had  a  truer  or  tenderer  sense  of  New  England 
character.  I  have  an  idea  that  no  one  else  of  his  day  could  have 
got  so  much  money  for  science  out  of  the  General  Court  of  Mass- 
achusetts; and  I  have  heard  him  speak  with  the  wisest  and  warm- 
est appreciation  of  the  hard  material  from  which  he  was  able  to 
extract  this  treasure.  The  legislators  who  voted  appropriations 
for  his  Museum  and  his  other  scientific  objects  were  not  usually 
lawyers  or  professional  men,  with  the  perspectives  of  a  liberal  edu- 
cation, but  were  hard-fisted  farmers  who  had  a  grip  of  the  State's 
money  as  if  it  were  their  own,  and  yet  gave  it  with  intelligent 
munificence.  They  understood  that  he  did  not  want  it  for  him- 
self, and  had  no  interested  aim  in  getting  it;  they  knew  that,  as  he 
once  said,  he  had  no  time  to  make  money,  and  wished  to  use  it 
solely  for  the  advancement  of  learning;  and  with  this  understand- 
ing they  were  ready  to  help  him  generously. 

"...  Longfellow  told  me  how,  after  the  doctors  had  condemned 
Agassiz  to  inaction,  on  account  of  his  failing  health,  he  had 
broken  down  in  his  friend's  study,  and  wept  like  an  Europaer,  and 
lamented,  'I  shall  never  finish  my  work'  ..." 

Howells  continues:  "Mrs.  Agassiz  has  put  into  her  interesting 
Lije  of  him,  a  delightful  story  which  she  told  me  about  him.  He 
came  to  her  beaming  one  day,  and  demanded,  'You  know  I  have 
always  held  such  and  such  an  opinion  about  a  certain  group  of 

fossil  fishes?'    'Yes,  yes!'    'Well,  I  have  just  been  reading 's 

new  book,  and  he  has  shown  me  that  there  is  n't  the  least  truth 
in  my  theory';  and  he  burst  into  a  laugh  of  unalloyed  pleasure  in 
relinquishing  his  error.  .  .  ." 

Howells  recalls  "a  dinner  at  his  house  to  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  when 
the  poet  came  on  from  California,  and  Agassiz  approached  him 
over  the  coffee  through  their  mutual  scientific  interest  in  the  last 
meeting  of  the  geological  'Society  upon  the  Stanlslow.'  He 
quoted  to  the  author  some  passages  from  the  poem  recording  the 


3  8  "The  Saturday  Club 


final  proceedings  of  this  body,  which  had  particularly  pleased  him, 
and  I  think  Mr.  Harte  was  as  much  amused  at  finding  himself 
thus  in  touch  with  the  savant^  as  Agassiz  could  ever  have  been 
with  that  delicious  poem." 

To  show  the  joy  of  this  free  Swiss  mountaineer  in  life  in  our 
Republic  and  —  as  a  great  master  in  science  —  its  vast  field,  we 
only  need  to  record  his  action  when  the  French  Emperor  sent  him 
the  offer  of  the  chair  of  Palaeontology  in  the  Museum  of  Natural 
History  at  Paris.  Agassiz  wrote  to  his  friend  M.  Martens:  "The 
work  I  have  undertaken  here,  and  the  confidence  shown  in  me  .  .  . 
make  my  return  to  Europe  impossible  for  the  present.  .  .  .  Were 
I  offered  absolute  power  for  the  reorganization  of  the  Jardin  des 
PlanteSf  with  a  revenue  of  fifty  thousand  francs,  I  would  not 
accept  it.   I  like  my  independence  better." 

And  so,  though  the  world  was  Agasslz's  home,  and  he  made 
long  and  fruitful  excursions  from  his  base  here,  his  hearthstone 
was  in  Cambridge.   There  he  died,  —  his  Museum  his  monument. 

E.  W.  E. 


RICHARD  HENRY  DANA,  JR. 

Proceeding  in  alphabetical  order,  next  comes  a  born  gentleman, 
eminently  so  in  the  old  sense  of  the  word;  happily  so  in  the  full 
sense. 

Richard  H.  Dana,  Jr.,  born  in  Cambridge  in  1815,  came,  as 
he  always  remembered,  sixth  in  a  line  of  American  Danas  there, 
active  and  true  men,  especially  in  law  and  public  service,  in  fair 
or  in  stormy  times.  Dana's  father,  however,  was  devoted  to 
letters,  yet  a  good  citizen,  and  later  than  his  son  he  was  chosen 
into  the  Club. 

The  elder  Dana  wrote  of  Richard  when  but  ten  years  old:  "He 
is  a  boy  of  excellent  principles  even  now.  I  'm  afraid  he  is  too  sen- 
sitive for  his  own  happiness;  yet  he  is  generally  cheerful  and  ready 
for  play,  and  is  a  boy  of  true  spirit."  He  might  well  say  so,  for 
no  young  Spartan  could  have  shown  more  courage  under  the  cruel 
beatings  in  one  school,  and  the  ascetic  discipline  of  the  next,  both 
tolerated  by  parents  in  those  days  as  according  to  barbarous 
English  tradition.  At  the  age  of  eleven  Richard  was  one  of  twenty 
boys  taught  for  less  than  a  year,  in  Cambridge,  by  his  future  club- 
mate  Emerson.  Of  this  school,  Dana  wrote:  "A  very  pleasant 
instructor  we  had  in  Mr.  E.,  although  he  had  not  system  or  dis- 
cipline enough  to  ensure  regular  and  vigorous  study.  I  have  al- 
ways considered  it  fortunate  for  us  that  we  fell  into  the  hands  of 
more  systematic  and  strict  teachers,  though  not  so  popular  with 
us,  nor  perhaps  so  elevated  in  their  habits  of  thought  as  Mr.  E." 
After  this  the  boy  was  more  fortunate  than  in  his  earlier  experi- 
ences, in  the  school  where  he  was  prepared  for  college. 

As  every  one  knows,  the  failure  of  young  Dana's  eyes  in  his 
junior  year  at  Harvard  led  him  to  hazard  the  rude  remedy  of  a 
common  seaman's  life,  "round  the  Horn,"  on  a  trading  vessel 
to  the  seldom  visited  northern  Pacific  coast.  It  was  an  inspiration. 
Not  only  did  it  cure  his  eyes,  but  it  opened  them  to  the  lot,  which 
he  shared,  and  to  the  point  of  view,  of  men  humble,  toiling,  ex- 
posed, and  often  abused;  it  softened  him  to  human  beings,  and 


40  T'he  Saturday  Club 


hardened  to  danger.  Born  brave,  he  was  also  born  unusually 
aristocratic,  and  the  full  dose  of  his  two  years'  life  as  a  sailor  was 
needed  as  a  corrective,  and  gave  noble  results  through  his  after 
life.  His  book,  a  "by-product,"  quickly  made  him  friends  among 
high  and  low  in  both  hemispheres.  Its  style  was  simple  and  strong. 
President  Eliot,  in  whose  five-foot  book-shelf  it  holds  a  place, 
tells  us  that  some  one  who  bought  that  far-famed  collection  wrote 
to  him,  "That  one  book  is  worth  the  price  of  the  whole." 

After  graduating  at  Harvard  in  1837,  and  at  the  Law  School  in 
1839,  he  began  the  practice  of  law.  He  wrote  a  book,  The  Sea- 
man's Friend,  a  manual  of  sea  laws  and  usages.  As  a  result  of  his 
youthful  adventure,  admiralty  cases  came  to  him  with  increasing 
frequency,  and  soon  sailors  in  trouble  found  in  Dana  a  valuable 
friend.  But  soon  a  yet  more  helpless  and  abused  class  moved  his 
indignant  pity  in  their  cause.  Scorning  the  truckling  to  the  South 
of  the  "Cotton  Whigs,"  Dana,  a  "Conscience  Whig,"  became  an 
active  Free-Soiler  in  1852.  Two  years  later,  when  most  of  Boston's 
aristocracy,  at  their  idol  Webster's  word,  joined  with  her  lowest 
elements,  approved  and  aided  the  enforcement  of  the  law  which 
made  them  "the  jackals  of  the  slave-holder,"  the  high-spirited 
Dana  did  his  best  intelligently  and  valiantly  to  save  poor  refugees 
from  being  sent  back  to  slavery,  but  in  vain.  Going  home  from 
the  Court-House  he  was  struck  down  with  a  club  by  a  hired  ruf- 
fian. A  politician  wrote  to  Dana,  surprised  that  he,  a  conserva- 
tive, should  join  the  Free-Soilers.  In  his  answer  he  said:  "There 
is  a  compound  of  selfishness  and  cowardice  which  often  takes  to 
itself  the  honored  name  of  Conservatism  .  .  .  making  material 
prosperity  and  ease  Its  pole-star,  will  do  nothing  and  risk 
nothing  for  a  moral  principle.  But  not  so  conservatism.  Conser- 
vatism sometimes  requires  a  risking  or  sacrificing  of  material  ad- 
vantages. ...  In  a  case  for  liberal,  comprehensive  justice  to 
others,  with  only  a  remote  and  chiefly  moral  advantage  to  our- 
selves, to  be  done  at  the  peril  of  our  immediate  personal  advan- 
tages, conservatism  is  more  reliable  than  radicalism." 

Again:  "I  am  a  Free-Soiler,  because  I  am  (who  should  not  say 
so)  of  the  stock  of  the  old  Northern  gentry,  and  have  a  particular 
dislike  to  any  subserviency  or  even  appearance  of  subserviency 


A'^!^.^ 


(i^^t-t-^^ 


Richard  Henry  Dana^  jfr.         4 1 

on  the  part  of  our  people  to  the  slave-holding  oligarchy.  I  was  dis- 
gusted with  it  in  College,  at  the  Law  School,  and  have  been,  since, 
in  society  and  politics.  The  spindles  and  day-books  are  against 
us  just  now,  for  Free-Soilism  goes  to  the  wrong  side  of  the  ledger. 
The  blood,  the  letters,  and  the  plough  are  our  chief  reliance.  .  .  . 
I  am  a  *Free-Soiler'  and  nothing  else.  A  technical  Abolitionist  I 
am  not."  ■-  ^  .  -  ^  *  * 

Such  fearless  Free-Soilers,  among  persons  who  had  the  entry  of 
the  fashionable  drawing-rooms  of  Boston,  as  Dana  and  Sumner, 
were  soon  made  to  feel  the  contempt  there  felt  for  the  cause  they 
championed,  and  they  presently  ceased  to  visit  the  homes  of 
former  friends,  now  cool.  The  Kansas  outrages  soon  began  to  turn 
the  tide,  however,  (later  reenforced  by  the  overwhelming  war-wave) 
but,  though  Dana  had  held  himself  superior  to  social  neglect,  his 
invitation  in  1856  to  join  the  men  who  were  forming  the  Saturday 
Club  was  highly  gratifying.  About  this  time  young  Adams  came 
to  study  law  in  Dana's  office.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  Dana's 
unhesitating  choice  of  the  brave  part,  with  no  heed  to  the  sacri- 
fice, moved  in  remembrance  and  warmed  the  style  of  an  author 
usually  cool  and  even  blunt.  After  forty  years,  Adams  wrote  of 
Dana  in  his  defence  of  the  fugitives:  —  "His  connection  with  those 
cases  was  the  one  great  professional  and  political  act  of  his  life. 
It  was  simply  superb.  There  is  nothing  fairer  or  nobler  in  the  long, 
rich  archives  of  the  law;  and  the  man  who  holds  that  record  in 
his  hand  may  stand  with  head  erect  at  the  bar  of  that  final  judg- 
ment itself." 

Dana's  head  and  heart  were  too  high  to  consider  for  a  moment 
social  slights,  actual  or  possible,  in  running  his  course,  but  it  cost 
him  much  professionally.  Adams  says:  "Nearly  all  the  wealth 
and  moneyed  institutions  of  Boston  were  controlled  by  the  con- 
servatives. .  .  .  The  ship-owners  and  merchants  were  Whigs 
almost  to  a  man.  .  .  .  Dana's  political  course  between  1848  and 
i860  not  only  retarded  his  professional  advancement,  but  seri- 
ously impaired  his  income.  It  kept  the  rich  clients  from  his  office. 
He  was  the  counsel  of  the  sailor  and  the  slave,  —  persistent,  cou- 
rageous, hard-fighting,  skilful,  but  still  the  advocate  of  the  poor 
and  the  unpopular.  In  the  mind  of  wealthy  and  respectable  Boston 


42  'The  Saturday  Club 

almost  any  one  was  to  be  preferred  to  him,  —  The  Free-Soil 
lawyer,  the  counsel  for  the  fugitive  slave,  alert,  indomitable,  al- 
ways on  hand." 

*'The  spirit  of  liberty  and  also  of  equal  rights  of  men  before  the 
law  were  so  wrought  into  the  fabric  of  his  character,"  says  Bishop 
Lawrence,  "that  his  soul  was  afire  at  any  invasion  of  this  prin- 
ciple. When,  therefore,  a  despised  black  man  was  about  to  be  car- 
ried into  bondage,  Mr.  Dana  stood  by  his  side  in  his  defence  as 
naturally  as  if  he  had  sprung  to  the  defence  of  his  own  brother. 
Again,  in  his  law  practice  the  question  of  the  amount  involved 
or  the  fee  to  be  received  had  no  interest  for  him;  his  sense  of  duty 
was  such  that  he  never  failed  to  serve  the  humblest  with  the  best 
of  his  time  and  thought."  Dana  desired  and  foresaw  the  coming  of 
that  system  of  international  comity  and  justice  that  now,  it 
seems,  must  surely  come. 

The  entry  already  quoted  from  Mr.  Dana's  diary  of  1855  shows 
that  he  had  been,  by  invitation,  one  of  the  Saturday  diners  In  the 
formative  period  of  the  Club.  Of  his  membership  Mr.  Adams 
wrote  with  characteristic  plain  speech:  "Through  what  affiliation 
Dana  became  one  of  the  company  does  not  appear.  There  was 
certainly  no  particular  sympathy,  intellectual  or  otherwise,  be- 
tween himself  and  his  ancient  instructor  at  Cambridge,  now  be- 
come, to  quote  Dana's  own  words,  'a  writer  and  lecturer  upon 
what  Is  called  the  transcendental  philosophy,'  —  a  philosophy 
Dana  unquestionably  never  took  the  trouble  even  to  try  to  under- 
stand .  .  ."  Adams  continues :  "Judge  Hoar  and  Mr.  Dana  were, 
with  the  exception  of  Woodman,  the  only  lawyers  in  the  company, 
and  Judge  Hoar  was  a  fellow  townsman  and  neighbour  of  Emer- 
son's; the  probabilities  are,  therefore,  that  it  was  through  Hoar  and 
Woodman  that  Dana,  with  whose  literary  and  social  qualities  they 
were  well  acquainted,  became  one  of  the  little  Emerson  coterie." 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  Lowell  spoke  of  Dana  as  one 
of  his  earliest  friends. 

Adams  says:  "Dana  did  not  express  himself  too  strongly  when 
he  wrote  in  his  diary  that  the  Saturday  Club  had  'become  an  Im- 
portant and  much  valued  thing'  to  him.  In  fact,  it  supplied  a  need 
in  his  life,  for  it  not  only  gratified  to  a  certain  extent  his  social 


Richard  Henry  Dana^  yr.         43 

cravings,  which  found  little  enough  to  gratify  them  elsewhere  in 
the  routine  of  his  working  life,  but  it  also  brought  him  in  regular 
contact  with  men  whom  he  otherwise  would  have  rarely  met, — 
men  like  Agassiz,  Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Holmes,  who  gave  to  the 
Club  dinners  that  intellectual  and  literary  flavour  which  Dana  ap- 
preciated so  much,  and  in  professional  life  seldom  enjoyed." 

Long  afterwards,  in  referring  to  Dana  in  this  connection.  Judge 
Hoar  wrote:  "He  was  a  pretty  constant  attendant  at  the  dinners, 
and  evidently  had  a  profound  respect  for  them  as  an  institution. 
He  always  struck  me  'as  made  for  state  occasions  and  great  cere- 
monials.' He  did  not  usually  take  a  leading  part  in  the  conversa- 
tion, unless  some  matter  of  politics  or  history,  English  or  Amer- 
ican, was  under  consideration;  and  in  the  rapid  flow  of  wit  and 
wisdom  which  Lowell  and  Holmes  and  Whipple  and  Agassiz  and 
Felton  would  keep  up,  he  was  not  often  a  contributor.  He  told  a 
story  very  well,  when  he  chose;  but  was  a  little  formal  about  it, 
though  he  had  some  powers  of  mimicry;  and  In  personal  discus- 
sions he  had  a  keen  perception  of  salient  points  of  character,  with 
a  hearty  detestation  of  meanness  or  baseness  —  and  about  as 
much  for  vulgarity,  as  rated  by  his  standard.  He  was  not  given 
to  repartee,  and  seemed  to  prefer  more  methodical  and  elabo- 
rate discourse.  There  was  a  certain  Episcopal  flavour  about  his 
manners  and  speech,  and  way  of  regarding  other  people,  that 
matched  oddly  with  his  thorough  democracy  concerning  human 
rights.  He  had  an  imagination  kindred  to  Burke's  in  splendour, 
but  regarded  facts,  where  they  presumed  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
theories,  with  suspicion,  if  not  with  disapproval." 

Mr.  Norton,  like  the  Judge,  spoke  of  Mr.  Dana  as  "a  capital 
narrator  with  a  vast  store  of  anecdotes.  He  had  a  story  he  liked 
to  tell  when  there  were  New  Yorkers  present  as  guests.  Dana 
used  occasionally  to  slip  in  to  hear  the  services  at  a  negro  church  on 
Bowdoin  Street.  The  sexton  knew  him  well  and  one  morning 
when  he  appeared,  said:  'Good  mornin',  Mr.  Dana,  I  would  n't 
advise  yer  to  go  inter  de  church  to-day.'  'But  why  not?'  'Well, 
yer  see,  sah,  there's  a  New  York  preacher,  not  a  man  of  talents, 
—  New  York  man,  you  see,  sah.'" 

Dana   cared  for   the  ancient  classics   and   appreciated   their 


44  "The  Saturday  Club 

influence  in  the  education  of  modern  youth.  Shakspeare,  Milton, 
Spencer,  Bacon,  he  enjoyed  in  his  father's  library  and  always 
reverted  to.  Keble's  Christian  Year  was  his  vade  mecum,  and,  in 
his  English  trip,  his  visit  to  Keble's  home  and  church  was  his 
happiest  experience.  For  contemporary  writers,  especially  Ameri- 
cans, he  seems  to  have  cared  less.  He  especially  abhorred  Dar- 
winism, and  the  godlessness  that  he  found  in  the  scientific  theo- 
ries of  later  investigators.  Agassiz's  religious  feeling  and  struggle 
against  Darwin  must  have  been  a  comfort  to  him. 

Dana's  idea  of  a  gentleman  is  quoted  by  Adams  as  a  reason 
why  he  enjoyed  the  Club:  "Plain  in  their  dress,  simple  in  their 
manners,  the  question  whether  they  are  doing  the  right  thing — 
cowW(?  z7/flw^,  whether  this  or  that  is  genteel  or  not  —  never  seems 
to  occur  to  them,  or  to  have  any  place  in  their  minds.  There  is  a 
freedom  of  true  gentility,  as  well  as  of  true  Christianity,  while 
many  men  aim  at  the  mark  by  striving  to  do  the  deeds  of  the  law, 
not  having  the  guide  within,  and  are  all  their  lifetime  suffering 
bondage," 

Mr.  Dana's  integrity,  courage,  culture,  knowledge  of  affairs, 
and  his  patriotism  might  seem  to  have  fitted  him  for  high  places, 
and  to  these  he  aspired.  Unhappily,  he  apparently  had  un- 
consciously a  native  disqualification  —  incurable.  This  was  a 
certain  repellent  mannerism,  behind  which  lay  want  of  tact. 
With  his  love  for  England  there  seems  to  have  remained  in  him, 
with  all  the  virtues,  through  six  generations,  a  certain  want  of  per- 
ception sometimes  noticed  in  her  sons.  "His  proper  place,"  says 
his  biographer,  "was  at  the  bar.  .  .  .  Had  he  adhered  to  his  pro- 
fession, he  not  improbably  would  at  last  have  attained,  had  he  so 
desired,  that  foremost  place  in  the  judiciary  of  Massachusetts 
once  held  by  his  grandfather.  But,  with  a  pronounced  taste  for 
political  life,  Dana  had,  unfortunately,  no  political  faculty.  .  .  . 
Under  certain  circumstances  he  might  have  been  an  eminent 
statesman,  but  under  no  circumstances  could  he  ever  have  been 
a  successful  politician."  And  yet,  during  the  Civil  War  and  Re- 
construction periods,  he  gave  clear  opinions  on  important  subjects 
to  the  President,  and  to  his  friends  and  club-mates,  Adams,  the 
Minister  to  Great  Britain,  and  Senator  Sumner. 


Richard  Henry  Dana^  yr.         45 

Dana's  humanity  recoiled  from  the  cruel  doctrines  of  the 
Orthodox  Church  of  New  England  into  which  he  was  born  — 
"born,"  he  could  not  believe,  "under  Thy  wrath,"  though  this 
phrase  was  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  which  he  later  used. 
Also  his  temperament,  as  Bishop  Lawrence  puts  it,  "hked  back- 
ground" in  his  church,  as  in  his  family  history.  He  found  rest 
and  comfort  in  the  arms  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

President  Eliot  pays  this  compliment  to  the  memory  of  Mr. 
Dana,  "He  was  interested  in  everything  pertaining  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  human  race." 

Mr.  Perry  calls  attention  to  the  allurements  that  new  countries 
in  their  maiden  beauty,  and  old  lands  in  their  purple  atmosphere 
of  historic  charm,  held  out  to  Mr.  Dana.  In  middle  life,  and  again, 
years  later,  he  expressed  in  letters  how  great  was  this  temptation. 
As  Mr.  Perry  says,  "of  an  essentially  romantic  temperament,  he 
was  forced  by  external  circumstances  to  compete  with  persons 
who  (as  he  said)  *  never  walk  but  in  one  line  from  their  cradle  to 
their  grave.' "  Dana  steadily  walked  the  line  of  duty,  but  happily 
had  fullest  happiness  in  one  or  two  journeys  afar,  and,  shortly 
before  his  death,  described  his  sojourn  at  Castellamare  as  "a 
dream"  of  life. 

E.  W.  E. 


JOHN  SULLIVAN  DWIGHT 

When  Lowell  wrote  "The  Fable  for  Critics"  in  1848,  he  coupled 
in  the  happiest  fashion  the  names  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and 
John  SulHvan  Dwight.  Nature,  according  to  Lowell,  had  used  some 
woman-stuff  in  shaping  Hawthorne:  — 

"  The  success  of  her  scheme  gave  her  so  much  delight 
That  she  tried  it  again,  shortly  after,  in  Dwight: 
Only,  while  she  was  kneading  and  shaping  the  clay, 
She  sang  to  her  work  in  her  sweet,  childish  way, 
And  found,  when  she  'd  put  the  last  touch  to  his  soul, 
That  the  music  had  somehow  got  mixed  with  the  whole." 

Dwight  was  only  thirty-five  when  these  Hues  were  written,  but 
they  indicate,  with  delicate  grace,  the  characteristics  that  domi- 
nated his  long  Hfe.  A  born  lover  of  music,  he  gave  himself  instinc- 
tively to  the  task  of  serving  this  art  in  the  community.  As  critic, 
journaHst,  and  organizer  of  musical  associations  he  performed  a 
matchless  service  to  his  native  city  and  to  the  interests  of  music 
throughout  America.  Without  technical  training  or  adequate  pro- 
fessional knowledge,  without  financial  resources  or  much  practi- 
cal worldly  wisdom,  Dwight  succeeded  in  his  high  aim  by  the  sole 
force  of  a  pure  unworldly  enthusiasm  for  the  beautiful.  An  origi- 
nal member  of  the  Saturday  Club,  and  surviving,  together  with 
Holmes,  Lowell  and  Judge  Hoar  of  the  original  members,  to  be- 
come one  of  its  incorporators  in  1886,  Dwight  has  the  unique  and 
rather  odd  distinction  of  being  the  only  man  in  the  Club  who  has 
ever  represented  primarily  the  art  of  music,  —  as  Rowse  and 
Hunt  have  been  our  only  painters  and  Story  our  single  sculptor. 
There  are  many  testimonies  to  Dwight's  fidelity  to  the  Saturday 
Club  and  to  his  unfailing  attendance  upon  its  dinners.  Our  asso- 
ciate, Mr.  Howells,  in  writing  of  his  early  recollections  of  the  Club, 
notes  that  "John  Dwight,  the  musical  critic,  and  a  nature  most 
musically  sweet,  was  always  smilingly  present." 

He  was  the  son  of  Dr.  John  Dwight  of  Boston.  The  father  had 
studied  first  for  the  ministry  and  then  turned  to  medicine,  and 


yohn  Sullivan  Dwight  47 

is  remembered  as  a  radical  free-thinker.  The  son  was  born  in 
Court  Street,  in  May,  1813,  went  to  the  Latin  School,  and  car- 
ried to  Harvard  more  Latin  and  Greek,  he  thought,  than  he  brought 
away.  His  chief  interests  lay  already  in  music  and  poetry.  He 
was  chosen  poet  by  his  class  of  1832,  a  class  that  had  among  its 
members  Dwight's  lifelong  friends  Estes  Howe,  John  Holmes,  and 
Charles  T.  Brooks.  Then  he  drifted  into  the  Divinity  School, 
where  he  and  C.  P.  Cranch  used  to  play  duets  until  their  out- 
raged friend,  Theodore  Parker,  who  disliked  music,  was  driven 
in  self-defence  to  saw  wood  outside  their  door.  George  Willis 
Cooke,  whose  excellent  Life  of  Dwight  preserves  this  anecdote, 
prints  also  an  interesting  correspondence  between  Parker  and 
Dwight  in  1837.  The  latter  had  been  graduated  from  the  Divinity 
School  in  1836,  but  not  succeeding  in  finding  a  pulpit,  he  asked 
Parker  to  point  out  his  faults,  —  a  service  for  which  Theodore 
Parker  was  always  well  fitted.  "You  surround  yourself  with  the 
perfumed  clouds  of  music,"  he  wrote.  "You  are  deficient  in  will. 
.  .  .  You  have  done  fine  things,  but  they  are  nothing  to  what  you 
can  and  ought  to  do."  It  appears  from  the  correspondence,  how- 
ever, that  Dwight  had  already  been  invited  to  enumerate  Parker's 
faults,  and  his  judgment  upon  that  wood-sawing  son  of  thunder 
illuminates  for  us  his  own  gentle  soul.  "I  don't  like  to  see  a  man 
have  too  much  will,"  he  writes:  "it  mars  the  beauty  of  nature. 
You  seem,  as  the  phrenologist  said,  'goaded  on.'  Your  life  seems 
a  succession  of  convulsive  efforts,  and  the  only  wonder  is  to  me 
that  they  don't  exhaust  you.  .  .  .  Coupled  with  your  high  ideal 
is  an  impotent  wish  to  see  it  immediately  realized,  —  two  things 
which  don't  go  well  together;  for  the  one  prompts  you  to  love, 
the  other,  soured  by  necessary  disappointment,  prompts  to  hate, 
at  least  contempt.  I  think  your  love  of  learning  is  a  passion,  that 
it  Injures  your  mind  by  converting  insensibly  what  is  originally  a 
pure  thirst  for  truth  into  a  greedy,  avaricious,  jealous  striving,  not 
merely  to  know,  but  to  get  all  there  is  to  be  known.  .  .  .  Have 
you  not  too  much  of  a  mania  for  all  printed  things,  —  as  if  books 
were  the  symbols  of  that  truth  to  which  the  student  aspires?  You 
write,  you  read,  you  talk,  you  think,  in  a  hurry,  for  fear  of  not 
getting  all." 


4^  The  Saturday  Club 

Mr.  Emerson,  always  unwearied  in  his  kindness  toward  young 
idealists  of  Dwight's  type,  arranged  to  have  him  supply  the  pul- 
pit in  East  Lexington,  where  he  himself  had  been  ministering. 
Dwight  preached  there  intermittently  in  1837  and  1838,  but  his 
sermons,  hastily  thrown  together  just  before  the  service,  failed  to 
satisfy  the  congregation.  He  was  immersed  in  German  studies, 
in  music,  and  in  miscellaneous  literature.  He  wrote  for  the 
Christian  Examiner  in  1838  what  is  thought  to  be  the  earliest 
American  review  of  Tennyson's  poems,  and  published  in  that  same 
year  translations  from  Goethe  and  Schiller,  with  notes,  for  George 
Ripley's  series  of  volumes  entitled  Specimens  of  Foreign  Stand- 
ard Literature.  This  was  ten  years  earlier  than  the  translations 
of  Dwight's  friend  Frederick  Hedge.  Carlyle  praised  Dwight's 
work  with  generous  warmth:  "I  have  heard  from  no  English 
writer  whatever  as  much  truth  as  you  write  in  these  notes  about 
Goethe."  Finally,  in  May,  1839,  the  young  minister  without  a 
pulpit  was  ordained  pastor  of  the  Unitarian  Church  in  North- 
ampton. George  Ripley  preached  the  ordination  sermon,  and 
the  great  Dr.  Channing  gave  the  charge.  This  was  on  Wednes- 
day. But  on  Sunday  morning  Dwight  woke  with  terror  to  re- 
member that  neither  of  his  two  sermons  were  prepared.  Never- 
theless, he  "mysteriously  got  through"  the  ordeal,  so  he  wrote, 
and  in  all  probability  the  following  Sunday  morning  found  him 
as  unprepared  as  ever.  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody  wrote  him  kindly 
that  "a  certain  want  of  fluency  in  prayer  had  been  the  real  cause 
of  your  want  of  outward  success"  and  she  offered  some  useful 
hints  for  remedying  the  deficiency.  But  Dwight's  professional  dif- 
ficulties were  soon  more  radical  than  Miss  Peabody  supposed,  and 
the  little  parish  took  the  initiative  in  releasing  him  from  an  un- 
congenial situation.   He  never  sought  another  pulpit. 

The  very  first  number  of  the  Dial  contained  three  contributions 
from  Dwight:  an  essay  on  the  "Religion  of  Beauty,"  originally 
used  as  a  sermon,  a  poem  entitled  "Rest,"  and  an  article  on  the 
Boston  "Concerts  of  the  Past  Winter,"  in  which  the  young  en- 
thusiast makes  this  interesting  prediction,  which  was  to  find  its 
fulfilment  later  through  the  generosity  of  another  member  of  the 
Saturday  Club:  "This  promises  something.    We  could  not  but 


yohn  Sullivan  Dwight  49 

feel  that  the  materials  that  evening  collected  might,  if  they  could 
be  kept  together  through  the  year,  and  induced  to  practise,  form 
an  orchestra  worthy  to  execute  the  grand  works  of  Haydn  and 
Mozart.  Orchestra  and  audience  would  improve  together,  and  we 
might  even  hope  to  hear  one  day  the  'Sinfonia  Eroica'  and  the 
'Pastorale' of  Beethoven."  Dwight  delivered  addresses  on  mu- 
sic before  the  Harvard  Musical  Association  and  elsewhere,  and 
in  November,  1841,  we  find  the  "stickit  minister"  installed  as 
teacher  of  music  and  Latin  at  Brook  Farm.  George  Ripley,  the 
leader  of  the  Brook  Farm  movement,  was  Dwight's  best  friend, 
and  had,  as  we  have  seen,  preached  his  ordination  sermon  at 
Northampton.  The  famous  experiment  "to  realize  practical 
equality  and  mutual  culture"  in  West  Roxbury  is  too  well  known 
to  be  discussed  here.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  Dwight's  idealism 
found  in  Brook  Farm  a  wholly  congenial  atmosphere.  As  the  di- 
rector of  the  community  music  and  the  trainer  of  the  choir  he 
was  the  originator  of  the  Mass  Clubs  which  did  so  much  to  create 
interest  in  the  work  of  the  great  German  composers.  Beethoven 
and  Mozart  were  his  passions.  He  played  both  the  piano  and  the 
flute,  and  was  fond  of  dreamy  improvisations.  He  wrote  articles 
on  music  for  Lowell's  ill-starred  Pioneer  and  for  the  Democratic 
Remezu.  When  the  weekly  Harbinger,  published  at  Brook  Farm, 
had  succeeded  the  Dial  as  the  latest  organ  of  "the  newness,'* 
Dwight  was  a  constant  contributor,  and  he  thought  seriously  of 
following  this  periodical  when  it  removed  to  New  York,  He  lec- 
tured there  on  music,  and  Parke  Godwin  wrote  that  "if  this  city 
were  not  wholly  given  up  to  idolatry,  it  would  have  rushed  in  a 
body  to  hear  such  sound  and  beautiful  doctrine."  Evidently  the 
rush  did  not  take  place. 

But  it  wa§  a  kindly  fate  that  kept  Dwight  in  his  native  city. 
After  the  financial  failure  of  Brook  Farm,  he  had  charge  of  the 
music  of  Rev.  W.  H.  Channing's  "Religious  Union  of  Associa- 
tionists."  He  had  the  good  fortune  to  marry  Miss  Mary  Bullard, 
one  of  the  singers  in  his  choir.  Finally,  in  1852,  after  years  of 
hope  deferred,  he  realized  his  dream  of  founding  a  journal  de- 
voted to  music.  With  the  aid  of  the  Harvard  Musical  Associa- 
tion, Dwight's  Journal  of  Music  began  its  career  of  nearly  thirty 


50  The  Saturday  Club 

years.  Its  service  to  the  cause  of  musical  education  in  America 
is  universally  recognized  to-day.  It  set  high  standards,  made  no 
compromise  with  the  interests  of  publishers,  and  told  the  truth. 
Dwight  was  no  lover  of  editorial  drudgery,  had  the  scantiest  re- 
muneration, and  lacked,  no  doubt,  the  technical  training  for  his 
task;  but  in  spite  of  every  limitation  in  musical  knowledge  and 
in  sympathy,  he  carried  the  Journal  single-handed  until  the  Oliver 
Ditson  Company  assumed  the  risks  of  publication  in  1859,  giving 
Dwight  full  control  of  the  editorial  policy. 

In  the  following  year  he  made  his  only  visit  to  Europe,  a  visit 
saddened  by  the  death  of  his  wife,  whom  he  had  been  obliged  to 
leave  in  Boston.  His  friends  of  the  Saturday  Club,  and  particu- 
larly Dr.  Holmes,  wrote  him  touching  letters  in  his  bereavement. 
His  own  letters  home  give  pleasant  glimpses  of  his  friendships 
with  Agassiz  and  Story,  and  his  acquaintance  with  the  Brown- 
ings and  Hans  Christian  Andersen  in  Rome.  After  his  year  of 
travel,  Dwight  returned  to  the  odd,  lonely  bachelor  life  which 
was  his  for  the  remainder  of  his  days.  Music  remained  the  chief 
interest  of  his  existence.  The  younger  members  of  the  musical 
profession  in  Boston  became  his  loyal  friends,  and  even  overlooked 
his  lukewarm  enthusiasm  for  the  more  ambitious  modern  music 
as  represented  by  Wagner;  "so  many  big  words,"  Dwight  wrote, 
"which,  by  their  enormous  orchestration,  crowded  harmonies, 
sheer  intensity  of  sound,  and  restless,  swarming  motion  without 
progress,  seem  to  seek  to  carry  the  listeners  by  storm,  by  a  roaring 
whirlwind  of  sound,  instead  of  going  to  the  heart  by  the  simpler 
and  diviner  way  of  'the  still  small  voice.'" 

Ultimately,  as  is  inevitable,  the  younger  generation  parted  com- 
pany with  him,  and  took  its  own  road.  In  September,  1881,  was 
printed  the  last  number  of  Dzvighfs  Journal  of  Music.  A  few 
sentences  from  the  editor's  valedictory  tell  the  essential  story: 
"There  is  no  putting  out  of  sight  the  fact  that  the  great  themes  for 
discussion,  criticism,  literary  exposition,  and  description,  which 
inspired  us  in  this  journal's  prime,  the  master  works  and  meaning 
of  the  immortal  ones,  like  Bach  and  Handel,  Mozart,  Beethoven, 
Schubert,  and  the  rest,  although  they  cannot  be  exhausted,  yet 
inevitably  lose  the  charm  of  novelty.  .  .  .  Lacking  the  genius 


yohn  Sullivan  Dwight  5  ^ 

to  make  the  old  seem  new,  we  candidly  confess  that  what  now  chal- 
lenges the  world  as  new  in  music  fails  to  stir  us  to  the  same  depths 
of  soul  and  feeling  that  the  old  masters  did,  and  doubtless  always 
will.  Startling  as  the  new  composers  are,  and  novel,  curious, 
brilliant,  beautiful  at  times,  they  do  not  bring  us  nearer  heaven. 
We  feel  no  inward  call  to  the  proclaiming  of  the  new  gospel.  We 
have  tried  to  do  justice  to  these  works  as  they  have  claimed  our  no- 
tice, and  have  omitted  no  intelligence  of  them  which  came  within 
the  limits  of  our  columns;  but  we  lack  motive  for  entering  their 
doubtful  service,  we  are  not  ordained  their  prophet.  .  .  .  We  have 
long  realized  that  we  were  not  made  for  the  competitive,  sharp 
enterprise  of  modern  journalism.  That  turn  of  mind  which  looks 
at  the  Ideal  rather  than  the  practical,  and  the  native  Indolence  of 
temperament  which  sometimes  goes  with  it,  have  made  our  move- 
ments slow.  Hurry  who  will,  we  rather  wait  and  take  our  chance. 
The  work  which  could  not  be  done  at  leisure,  and  in  disregard  to 
all  immediate  effect,  we  have  been  too  apt  to  feel  was  hardly 
worth  the  doing.  To  be  the  first  in  the  field  with  an  announce- 
ment or  a  criticism  or  an  idea  was  no  part  of  our  ambition.  How 
can  one  recognize  competitors  or  enter  into  competition,  and  at 
the  same  time  keep  his  eye  upon  the  truth.?"  Those  simple  and 
pathetic  words  carry  one's  mind  back  to  the  divinity  student 
whom  Theodore  Parker  thought  deficient  in  will,  to  the  Brook 
Farmer  who  disbelieved  in  the  competitive  system.  Doubtless  the 
age  had  now  left  him  behind,  but  for  nearly  fifty  years  Dwight's 
name  and  experience  had  been  synonymous  with  the  develop- 
ment of  musical  taste  in  Boston. 

Dr.  Henry  Ingersoll  Bowditch,  in  an  address  to  the  Harvard 
Musical  Association  on  their  semi-centennial  celebration,  after  tell- 
ing of  the  anxiety  which  his  enthralling  love  for  music  occasioned 
in  his  somewhat  puritanical  father,  said:  "Thus,  gentlemen,  I  have 
sketched  the  trials  of  my  youth;  and  I  compare  with  them  what 
occurs  now.  Music  is  not  now  necessarily  or  commonly  connected 
with  drunkenness.  Music  can  be  the  delight  of  every  family, 
for  every  child  now  learns  music  as  a  part  of  the  primary  educa- 
tion. Before  closing,  let  me  allude  to  two  persons  whose  influence 
has   been  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  leading  up  to  this 


52  'The  Saturday  Club 

blessed  result.  I  allude  to  John  S.  Dwight,  who,  by  his  Journal 
of  Music,  and  his  very  able  and  always  generous  criticism,  has 
upheld  the  divine  effect  of  music  on  the  human  mind  and  heart; 
and  to  Henry  Lee  Higginson,  who,  by  his  noble  generosity,  has 
sustained  for  so  many  years  the  Symphony  Concerts,  which  have 
in  reality  educated  the  present  generation  to  a  high  appreciation 
of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  noble  in  orchestral  music." 

It  was  fitting  that  in  Dwight's  last  years  the  Harvard  Musical 
Association  should  give  him  a  home  in  its  own  rooms.  There  at 
No.  I  West  Cedar  Street,  his  eightieth  birthday  was  Celebrated 
on  May  13,  1893,  and  there  was  held  his  burial  service  in  Septem- 
ber. Dr.  Holmes,  who  was  three  years  older,  and  was  now  the  last 
survivor  of  the  original  members  of  the  Club,  attended  the  funeral. 

Other  names  upon  the  roll  of  the  Saturday  Club  have  had 
higher  artistic  honors  than  John  S.  Dwight,  but  none  of  them, 
not  even  Hawthorne  or  Longfellow,  were  more  perfect  repre- 
sentatives of  the  artistic  temperament.  The  title  of  his  first 
article  in  the  Dial,  "The  Religion  of  Beauty,"  gives  the  keynote 
of  his  simple,  unworldly  idealism.  He  was  a  lover  of  beauty  with- 
out the  power  to  create,  except  that  his  rare  gift  of  appreciation 
and  enthusiasm  diffused  a  sense  of  beauty  throughout  a  whole 
community  —  and  perhaps  this  also  is  artistic  creation  of  a  fine 
and  true  sort.  He  lived  sunnily  in  lifelong  poverty,  loved  his 
friends,  loved  flowers  and  music,  and  "served  his  generation" 
perhaps  not  quite  according  to  the  notions  of  Theodore  Parker, 
but,  one  may  venture  to  hazard,  "according  to  the  will  of  God." 

B.  P. 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 

Born  in  1803,  in  Boston,  which,  in  his  age,  he  still  addressed  as 

"  Thou  darling  town  of  ours!  "  — 

Emerson  had  yet  from  boyhood  dear  association  with  the  woods 
and  the  quiet  stream  of  his  ancestral  town.  Therefore,  when  he 
left  his  parish  and  traditional  worship,  he  came  to  Concord  to 
receive  directly  the  word  that  he  was  sure  "still  floats  upon  the 
morning  wind. "  Here  he  made  a  home  for  the  rest  of  his  days, 
found  friends,  and  made  others  by  his  lectures  and  books  through 
the  older  and  the  younger  States,  and  some  in  England;  and  in 
Concord  he  died. 

In  College  he  was  held  an  indifferent  scholar,  but  read  eagerly 
according  to  his  own  tastes  and  interests.  He  received  some  prizes 
for  declamations,  and  was  chosen  class  poet  after  some  six  had  de- 
clined the  honour.  His  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration  in  1837  interested 
the  young  (Dr.  Holmes  has  called  it  our  literary  Declaration  of 
Independence),  but  startled  some  of  the  older  hearers,  and  his 
Divinity  School  Address,  delivered  for  conscience'  sake  after  some 
hesitation,  made  him  anathema  with  the  College  authorities  for 
thirty  years. 

Emerson  often  said,  "My  doom  and  my  strength  Is  solitude," 
yet  his  Interests  were  universal,  and  he  needed  men  and  their 
facts,  as  grist  for  his  mill,  to  interpret  and  Idealize.  His  journal 
tells  how  eagerly  he  went  Into  the  grocery,  with  open  ears  for  the 
homespun  wisdom  or  Saxon  witticisms  of  the  Idle  group  around 
the  store,  or  Into  the  Insurance  office  for  the  practical  or  political 
views  of  the  leading  citizens,  and  of  his  chagrin  when  they  fell 
silent  on  the  Instant  because  he  had  been  a  minister  and  was  a 
scholar  —  an  unknown  quantity  In  their  lives.  He  said  of  inter- 
course with  Nature  "One  to  one"  was  her  rule,  and  so  he  found 
needed  stimulation  In  one  to  one  conversation  in  his  study  or  a 
walk  in  the  woods :  — 

"  If  thought  unfold  her  mystery, 
If  friendship  on  me  smile, 


54  'T'he  Saturday  Club 

I  walk  in  fairy  palaces 

And  talk  with  gods  the  while.'* 

None  the  less,  he  had  always  a  craving  to  meet  and  talk  with  men 
of  thought  and  taste  and  performance,  and,  as  has  been  shown  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  through  years  was  working  to  that  end.  The 
experiments  of  the  Symposium  or  Transcendental  Club  were  not 
satisfying.  We  may  well  believe  that  the  dull  and  profuse  out- 
numbered the  more  reserved  men  of  intuition,  and  the  combative 
made  the  disciples  of  Nature  or  of  Art  wish  themselves  far  away. 
In  1837,  perhaps  returning  from  the  Symposium,  Mr.  Emer- 
son wrote :  "  Private,  accidental,  confidential  conversation  breeds 
thought.  Clubs  produce  oftener  words."  The  Town-and-Country 
Club  seemed  an  opportunity  for  the  country  members  to  meet 
bright  men  of  letters  and  society,  but  the  latter  probably  did  not 
come  much,  while  to  the  former  at  least  a  place  to  sit  down  and 
leave  their  satchels  or  parcels  was  a  comfort.  But  the  Athenaeum 
already  afforded  this,  with  great  additional  satisfaction  of  Its 
wealth  of  books,  and  the  only  gallery  of  sculpture,  paintings,  and 
prints  In  Boston.  It  may  have  been  of  the  Town-and-Country 
Club,  or  more  probably  of  the  Atlantic  Club,  that  the  following 
passage  In  Emerson's  essay  "Clubs"  speaks,  in  his  Conduct  of  Life: 
"I  remember  a  social  experiment  in  this  direction  wherein  It  ap- 
peared that  each  of  the  members  fancied  he  was  in  need  of  so- 
ciety, but  himself  unpresentable.  On  trial,  they  all  found  that 
they  could  be  tolerated  by  and  could  tolerate  each  other.  Nay,  the 
tendency  to  extreme  self-respect  which  hesitated  to  join  in  a  club 
was  running  rapidly  down  to  abject  admiration  of  each  other,  when 
the  club  was  broken  up  by  new  combinations."  It  must  be  re- 
membered that,  in  lectures  and  essays,  Mr.  Emerson  carefully 
veiled  or  blurred  personal  allusions. 

But  his  younger  friend,  Sam  Ward,  solved  the  problem  for  him  of 
a  fortunate  and  stable  club,  though  Woodman  carried  out  the  plan 
and  actually  set  it  a-going.  Of  Ward  already  something  has  been 
and  more  will  be,  in  turn,  told,  but  here  it  should  be  said  that, 
while  he  loyally  worked  to  please  Emerson,  his  knowledge  of  so- 
ciety made  it  easy  to  show  his  friend  who  would  cement  and  who 
would  disintegrate  the  Club,  and,  if  it  were  known  that  he  was 


/<yj.^ 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  5  5 

largely  responsible  for  its  gathering,  the  latter  class  could  be  more 
easily  omitted  without  too  serious  qualms  in  Emerson  concerning 
some  friends.  Ward  well  knew  also  that  —  such  is  human  frailty 
—  meat  and  wine,  and  an  appointed  place  and  time,  go  far  to 
making  the  gatherings  of  scattered  friends  sure  and  punctual, 
and  even  tend  to  repel  discomfortable  stoics. 

For  Emerson  the  Saturday  Club  fulfilled  his  desire.  It  gave  him 
frequent  opportunity  to  meet  old  friends  and  make  new  ones  of 
various  gifts.  ^  Almost  all  of  them,  like  himself,  were  busy  men. 
It  would  have  been  difficult,  and  in  many  cases  unnatural,  to  seek 
them  at  their  homes.  Here  they  were  seen  to  best  advantage,  for 
several  hours,  in  the  presence  of  their  cronies  who  knew  how  to 
draw  them  out.  He  could  learn  from  Sumner  of  affairs  in  Wash- 
ington or  pending  international  questions,  from  Governor  Andrew 
or  Forbes  of  what  Massachusetts  was  doing  in  the  war,  enjoy  the 
wit  of  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  Appleton,  hear  of  England  and  the 
Continent  from  Motley  and  Story  in  their  rare  home-comings. 
He  could  ask  what  questions  he  pleased  about  stars  from  Peirce, 
flowers  from  Gray,  or  art  from  Hunt,  and  meet  eminent  and  in- 
teresting guests  from  all  lands.  While  he  bore  his  part,  it  was  his 
delight,  in  company  as  in  solitude,  to  listen.  In  1870,  he  wrote  in 
his  journal:  "In  'Clubs'  I  ought  to  have  said  that  men,  being  each 
a  treasure-house  of  valuable  experiences,  —  and  yet  the  man  often 
shy  and  daunted  by  company  into  dumbness,  —  it  needs  to  court 
him,  to  put  him  at  his  ease,  to  make  him  laugh  or  weep,  and  so  at 
last  to  get  his  naturel  confessions,  and  his  best  experience." 

Again:  "If  I  were  rich,  I  should  get  the  education  I  have  always 
wished  by  persuading  Agassiz  to  let  me  carry  him  to  Canada; 
and  Dr.  Gray  to  go  to  examine  the  trans-Mississippi  flora;  and 
Wyman  should  find  me  necessary  to  his  excavations;  and  Alvan 
Clark  should  make  a  telescope  for  me  too;  and  I  can  easily  see 
how  to  find  the  gift  for  each  master  that  would  domesticate  me 
with  him  for  a  time." 

The  following  passage  from  a  very  recent  writer  on  Emerson  ^ 
well  states  the  importance  of  the  Club  to  him :  — 

"His  natural  man  was  pervaded  by  a  hunger  for  facts.  .  .  .  He 

^  Professor  0.  W.  Firkin  in  his  Study  of  Emerson. 


5  6  T'he  Saturday  Club 

packed  the  day  with  Impressions;  succession,  variety,  surprise, 
were  indispensable  to  his  well-being.  He  needed  news  like  a  club- 
man, though  the  news  might  belong,  if  you  Hked,  to  Nineveh  in  the 
pre-Christian  era.  .  .  .  Hence  ...  his  Interest  .  .  .  and  his  power 
to  erect  that  interest  into  a  flag  of  truce  beneath  which  he  could 
converse  amicably  with  persons  who  might  have  found  his  general 
views  Inscrutable  or  ridiculous.  .  .  .  When  we  have  grasped  the 
force  of  this  Impulse  in  the  mere  heathen  Emerson,  so  to  speak,  we 
are  prepared  for  the  magnitude  of  the  result  when  the  devout 
Emerson  confers  on  every  fact  the  added  fire  of  a  religious  value." 

Although  Mr.  Emerson  could  never  get  over  his  feeling  that  he 
was  not  adapted  for  social  occasions,  and  sometimes  called  him- 
self a  "kill-joy,"  he  greatly  valued  the  Club  and  returned  from  it 
always  full  of  admiration  for  his  friends.  jj 

He  once  wrote  in  his  journal:  "Social  occasions  also  are  part  of 
Nature  and  being,  and  the  delight  in  another's  superiority  is,  as 
Aunt  Mary  said,  my  best  gift  from  God,  for  here  the  moral  nature 
is  involved,  which  is  higher  than  the  Intellectual." 

Longfellow  wrote:  "More  and  more  do  I  feel,  as  I  advance  In 
life,  how  little  we  really  know  of  each  other.  Friendship  seems  to 
me  like  the  touch  of  musical-glasses  —  it  Is  only  contact;  but  the 
glasses  themselves,  and  their  contents,  remain  quite  distinct  and 
unmingled.  .  .  .  Some  poems  are  like  the  Centaurs  —  a  mingling 
of  man  and  beast,  and  begotten  of  Ixlon  on  a  cloud." 

But  Emerson  earned  his  living  by  lecturing,  and  so  lost  many 
winter  meetings,  when  afar  in  the  West.  Emerson  and  Longfellow 
did  not  often  meet,  but  the  Club  brought  them  together  agreeably. 

With  all  his  admiration  of  the  wits  of  the  Club,  Emerson  some- 
times suffered  mortification  because  of  them.  His  nervous  organ- 
ization, perhaps  transmitted  from  his  serious  ancestry,  was  vul- 
nerable in  one  respect  and  reacted  painfully  to  wit  suddenly 
sprung  upon  it.  In  an  essay  he  voices  his  abhorrence  of  "disgust- 
ing squeals  of  joy,"  and  gives  the  counsel  of  an  old  relative  to  her 
niece,  "My  dear,  never  laugh;  when  you  do,  you  show  all  your 
faults."  At  an  unexpected  shot  of  wit  his  own  face  was  likely 
to  break  up  almost  painfully,  though  he  could  control  the  sound 
entirely.    He  tells  his  own  story  impersonally  in  Letters  and  Social 


Ralph  TValdo  Emerson  S7 

Aims:  "How  often  and  with  what  unfeigned  compassion  we  have 
seen  such  a  person  receiving  Hke  a  wiUing  martyr  the  whispers  into 
his  ear  of  a  man  of  wit.  The  victim  who  has  just  received  the  dis- 
charge, if  in  a  solemn  company,  has  the  air  very  much  of  a  stout 
vessel  which  has  just  shipped  a  heavy  sea;  and  though  it  does  not 
split  it,  the  poor  bark  is  for  the  moment  critically  staggered.  The 
peace  of  society  and  the  decorum  of  tables  seem  to  require  that  next 
to  a  notable  wit  should  always  be  posted  a  phlegmatic  bolt-upright 
man,  able  to  stand  without  movement  of  muscle  whole  broad- 
sides of  this  Greek  fire.  It  is  a  true  shaft  of  Apollo,  and  traverses 
the  universe,  and  unless  it  encounter  a  mystic  or  a  dumpish  soul, 
goes  everywhere  heralded  and  harbingered  by  smiles  and  greet- 
ings. Wit  makes  its  own  welcome,  and  levels  all  distinctions.  No 
dignity,  no  learning,  no  force  of  character,  can  make  any  stand 
against  good  wit.  It  is  like  ice,  on  which  no  beauty  of  form,  no 
majesty  of  carriage,  can  plead  any  immunity,  —  they  must  walk 
gingerly,  according  to  the  laws  of  ice,  or  down  they  must  go,  dig- 
nity and  all.  'Do'st  thou  think,  because  thou  art  virtuous,  there 
shall  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale.^'" 

To  the  city  men  dinner  parties  were  common  occurrences,  but 
in  them  the  solitary  scholar  found  important  values,  and  wished  to 
use  the  six  or  eight  festivals  of  the  year  to  best  purpose.  In  his 
journal  Emerson  confesses:  "At  my  Club,  I  suppose  I  behave  very 
ill  in  securing  always,  if  I  can,  a  place  by  a  valued  friend,  and, 
though  I  suppose  (though  I  have  never  heard  it)  that  I  offend  by 
this  selection,  sometimes  too  visible,  my  reason  is  that  I,  who  see, 
in  ordinary,  rarely,  select  society,  must  make  the  best  use  of  this 
opportunity,  having,  at  the  same  time,  the  feeling  that 

*  I  could  be  happy  with  either, 
Were  the  other  dear  charmer  away,' 

I  am  interested  not  only  in  my  advantages,  but  in  my  disadvan- 
tages, that  is,  in  my  fortunes  proper;  that  is,  in  watching  my  fate, 
to  notice,  after  each  act  of  mine,  what  result.  Is  it  prosperous.'*  Is 
it  adverse,'*  And  thus  I  find  a  pure  entertainment  of  the  Intellect, 
alike  in  what  Is  called  good  or  bad.  I  can  find  my  biography  in 
every  fable  that  I  read." 


5  8  T'he  Saturday  Club 

In  spite  of  his  words  about  his  doom,  and  strength,  in  solitude, 
he  felt  that  these  Club  dinners  were  worth  far  more  than  their 
cost  to  scholars  living  apart  from  men  of  action  and  wit  and  re- 
search. Keen  in  his  watch  for  the  great  laws,  he  eagerly  listened 
to  the  talk.  He  once  said  of  men  of  affairs:  "They  don't  know 
what  to  do  with  their  facts.  I  know."  For  the  law  was  one,  alike 
in  matter  and  in  spirit,  and  he  watched  their  discoveries  with  the 
intuitions  of  ancient  prophets  and  of  poets,  and  with  what  had 
been  told  them  by  the  pine  tree  yesterday.  About  this  time  he 
writes  in  his  journal:  — 

"Nature,  —  what  we  ask  of  her  is  only  words  to  clothe  our 
thoughts.  The  mind  is  to  find  the  thought.  Chemistry,  Geology, 
Hydraulics  are  secondary.  The  Atomic  Theory  is,  of  course,  only 
an  interior  process  produced^  as  the  geometers  say,  or  the  outside 
effect  of  a  foregone  metaphysical  theory;  hydrostatics  only  the  sur- 
coatof  ideal  necessities.  Yet  the  thoughts  are  few,  the  forms  many, 
the  large  vocabulary  or  many-coloured  coat  of  the  indigent  Unity. 
The  savants  are  very  chatty  and  vain;  but,  hold  them  hard  to 
principle  and  definition,  and  they  become  very  mute  and  near- 
sighted. What  is  motion.?  What  is  beauty?  What  is  life .'*  What  is 
force?  Push  them  hard,  drive  home.  They  will  not  be  loquacious. 
I  have  heard  that  Peirce,  the  Cambridge  mathematician,  has  come 
to  Plato  at  last.  'T  is  clear  that  the  invisible  and  imponderable  is 
the  sole  fact.  'Why  changes  not  the  violet  earth  into  musk?'  asks 
Hafiz.  What  is  the  term  of  this  overflowing  Metamorphosis?  I 
do  not  know  what  are  the  stoppages,  but  I  see  that  an  all-dis- 
solving unity  changes  all  that  which  changes  not." 

Not  far  off  follow  the  next  entries :  — 

^^  Fluxional  quantities.  Fluxions,  I  believe,  treat  of  flowing 
numbers,  as,  for  example,  the  path  through  space  of  a  point  on 
the  rim  of  a  cart-wheel.  Flowing  or  varying.  Most  of  my  values 
are  very  variable;  —  my  estimate  of  America,  which  sometimes 
runs  very  low,  sometimes  to  ideal  prophetic  proportions.  My  esti- 
mate of  my  own  mental  means  and  resources  is  all  or  nothing;  in 
happy  hours,  life  looking  infinitely  rich,  and  sterile  at  others.  My 
value  of  my  Club  is  as  elastic  as  steam  or  gunpowder,  so  great 
now,  so  little  anon.     Literature  looks  now  all-sufficient,  but  in 


Ralph  TValdo  Emerson  59 

high  and  happy  conversation  it  shrinks  away  to  poor  experi- 
menting." 

^''Resources.  If  Cabot,  if  Lowell,  if  Agassiz,  if  Alcott  come  to 
me  to  be  messmates  in  some  ship,  or  partners  in  the  same  colony, 
what  they  chiefly  bring,  all  they  bring,  is  their  thoughts,  their 
way  of  classifying  and  seeing  things;  and  how  a  sweet  temper  can 
cheer,  how  a  fool  can  dishearten  the  days!" 

Emerson  found  the  Club  much  to  his  purpose  when  Englishmen 
came  to  Concord  with  letters  to  him,  and  there  they  found  the  best 
introduction  to  the  persons  they  would  naturally  wish  to  meet 
in  New  England.  His  value  of  his  Concord  friends  made  him  wish 
that  others  should  find  their  real  merits,  although  it  was  manifestly 
impossible  that  they  should  become  members.  Alcott  is  men- 
tioned by  Dana  as  having  been  brought  to  one  of  the  early  Albion 
dinners,  and  Henry  James,  Sr.,  praises  Ellery  Channing's  demean- 
our, in  an  amusing  letter  which  will  appear  later.  The  degree 
of  success  of  the  experiment  of  trapping  a  faun  in  Walden  woods 
and  bringing  him  to  the  Club  is  shown  in  this  letter  from  Thoreau 
to  his  English  friend  Cholmondeley,^  who  had  urged  him  not  to  live 
a  solitary  life,  and  asked  him,  "Are  there  no  clubs  in  Boston?"  — 

"I  have  lately  got  back  to  that  glorious  society  called  Solitude, 
where  we  meet  our  friends  continually,  and  can  imagine  the  out- 
side world  also  to  be  peopled.  Yet  some  of  my  acquaintance  would 
fain  hustle  me  into  the  almshouse  for  'the  sake  of  society,'  as  if 
I  were  pining  for  that  diet,  when  I  seem  to  myself  a  most  be- 
friended man,  and  find  constant  employment.  However,  they  do 
not  believe  a  word  I  say.  They  have  got  a  Club,  the  handle  of 
which  is  in  the  Parker  House  at  Boston,  and  with  this  they  beat  me 
from  time  to  time,  expecting  to  make  me  tender  or  minced  meat, 
so  fit  for  a  club  to  dine  off. 

*  Hercules  with  his  club 
The  Dragon  did  drub  ; 
But  More  of  More  Hall, 
With  nothing  at  all, 
He  slew  the  Dragon  of  Wantley.' 

*  The  correspondence  between  Thomas  Cholmondeley,  who  had  boarded  with  Mrs. 
Thoreau,  and  Henry  Thoreau  was  published  in  the  Atlantic  by  Mr.  F.  B.  Sanborn  in  Decem- 
ber, 1893. 


6o  The  Saturday  Club 

Ah!  that  More  of  More  Hall  knew  what  fair  play  was.^  Channing, 
who  wrote  to  me  about  it  once,  brandishing  the  club  vigorously 
(being  set  on  by  another,  probably),  says  now^  seriously,  that 
he  is  sorry  to  find  by  my  letters  that  I  am  '  absorbed  in  politics,' 
and  adds,  begging  my  pardon  for  his  plainness,  'Beware  of  an 
extraneous  life!'  and  so  he  does  his  duty  and  washes  his  hands  of 
me.  I  tell  him  that  it  is  as  if  he  should  say  to  the  sloth,  that  fellow 
that  creeps  so  slowly  along  a  tree,  and  cries  from  time  to  time, 
'Beware  of  dancing!' 

"The  doctors  are  all  agreed  that  I  am  suffering  for  want  of 
society.  Was  never  a  case  like  it.^  First,  I  did  not  know  that  I  was 
suffering  at  all.  Secondly,  as  an  Irishman  might  say,  I  had  thought 
it  was  indigestion  of  the  society  I  got. 

"As  for  the  Parker  House,  I  went  there  once,  when  the  Club 
was  away,  but  I  found  it  hard  to  see  through  the  cigar  smoke, 
and  men  were  deposited  about  in  chairs  over  the  marble  floor,  as 
thick  as  legs  of  bacon  in  a  smoke-house.  It  was  all  smoke,  and 
no  salt,  Attic  or  other.  The  only  room  in  Boston  which  I  visit 
with  alacrity  is  the  Gentlemen's  Room  at  the  Fitchburg  Depot, 
where  I  wait  for  the  cars,  sometimes  for  two  hours,  in  order  to 
get  out  of  town.  It  is  a  paradise  to  the  Parker  House,  for  no 
smoking  is  allowed,  and  there  Is  more  retirement.  A  large  and 
respectable  club  of  us  hire  it  (Town-and-Country  Club),^  and  I 
am  pretty  sure  to  find  some  one  there  whose  face  is  set  the  same 
way  as  my  own," 

In  respect  to  Emerson's  smoking  it  should  be  authoritatively 
said  (the  more  since  a  widely  circulated   tobacco  advertisement 

*  Thoreau,  though  he  made  light  of  clubs  and  would  not  go,  when  invited  by  Emerson 
as  his  guest,  to  the  Saturday  Club  (as  his  friend  Channing  did),  had  friendly  relations  with 
several  members:  Emerson,  of  course,  first;  then  Hawthorne,  from  Old  Manse  days,  yet 
rarely;  Henry  James,  whom  he  liked;  Agassiz  whom  he  had  efficiently  served  by  furnishing 
him  many  fishes,  turtles,  birds,  and  small  mammals  from  Concord,  to  Agassiz's  enthusi- 
astic delight,  and  Elliot  Cabot,  then  studying  with  Agassiz,  had  been  the  go-between  in 
these  transactions;  Judge  Hoar,  who  was  Thoreau's  neighbour,  kindly  enough,  but  en- 
tirely unsympathetic.  As  for  Channing's  complaint  that  Thoreau  was  "absorbed  in  poli- 
tics," it  meant  this:  that  Thoreau,  always  personally  giving  comfort  and  furtherance  to  any 
fugitive  slave  that  came  to  him,  was,  at  this  time,  deeply  stirred  by  the  attempts  to  make 
Slave  States  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska.  He  attended  the  Free-State  meetings  in  Concord  and 
contributed  money. 

2  The  day  of  the  Town-and-Country  Club  was  past.  Thoreau,  of  course,  means  the 
general  public's  use  of  the  station. 


Ralph  TValdo  Emerson  6 1 

stated,  a  few  years  since,  with  a  garbled  picture,  that  Emerson 
doted  on  his  pipe,  or  words  to  that  eifect) ;  that  he  was  the  most 
abstemious  of  smokers,  using  a  fraction  of  a  cigar,  but  not  even 
daily.  ^  Once,  on  the  eloquent  urgency  of  Mr.  John  Holmes,  he 
tried  a  pipe  in  the  Adirondac  camp.    Once  was  enough. 

To  persons  of  ascetic  temperament,  or  those  who  watched  their 
digestive  processes  overmuch,  Mr.  Emerson  would  say  that  an 
occasional  dinner.  In  good  company,  with  many  courses  and  wine, 
would  only  do  them  good  —  an  excellent  medicine.  But  no  man 
thought  less  about  food  than  he.  What  was  set  before  him  he  ate 
without  comment,  unless  in  praise.  But  should  any  question  of 
ingredients  or  methods  arise,  he  would  say,  "No!  No!  It  is  a  beau- 
tiful crystallization,"  or  "roses  and  violets." 

In  his  youth,  because  an  overmastering  love  of  writing  and 
books  kept  him  too  much  indoors  and  quite  away  from  games,  he 
was  delicate  and  barely  escaped  consumption.  Nature,  when  he 
came  to  consult  her  oracle  in  Concord  woods,  gave  him  health, 
and  it  henceforth  increased  until  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life. 
Because  of  early  neglect,  his  chest  was  narrow,  and  hence  his 
shoulders  had  an  unusual  slope  which  made  his  neck  seem  very 
long,  but  his  legs  were  well  developed  and  he  was  a  strong  and 
swift  walker  and  seldom  used  a  carriage.  He  stood  six  feet  in  his 
shoes  and  walked  erect.  He  had  healthy  colour,  and  very  few 
wrinkles  came  with  age.  His  eyes  were  a  clear,  strong  blue  and 
his  hair  straight  and  rather  dark  brown  and  never  allowed  to 
grow  very  long. 

Lowell  had  a  deep  reverence  for  Emerson.  In  his  essay  "De- 
mocracy," after  speaking  of  the  peculiar  regard  which  Lincoln 
won,  he  says:  "And  I  remember  another  whom  popular  respect 
enveloped,  as  with  a  halo.  The  least  vulgar  of  men,  the  most  aus- 
terely genial  and  the  most  independent  of  opinion.  Wherever  he 
went,  he  never  met  a  stranger,  but  everywhere  neighbours  and 
friends  proud  of  him  as  their  ornament  and  decoration.  Institu- 
tions which  could  bear  and  breed  such  men  as  Lincoln  and  Emer- 
son had  surely  some  energy  for  good." 

1  It  should  be  said  that  this  firm  courteously  withdrew  their  advertisement  with  apology, 
on  being  informed  of  the  facts. 


62  T^he  Saturday  Club 

That  inborn  element  of  aloofness,  recognized  by  Emerson  as 
a  limitation,  and  an  advantage,  did  not  prevent  the  happiness 
which  he  gratefully  expressed  in  "the  escort  of  friends  with  which 
each  spirit  walks  through  time." 

E.  W.  E. 


EBENEZER  ROCKWOOD  HOAR 

George  Frisbie  Hoar  wrote  of  the  family,  "Our  ancestors  were 
Puritans  in  every  line  of  descent,  as  far  as  they  are  known,  from 
the  time  when  Puritanism  was  first  known."  Joanna  Hoar,  a 
widow  of  the  sheriff  of  Gloucestershire,^  came  with  her  children 
to  Scituate  in  1640.  John  Hoar,  her  eldest  son,  soon  settled  in 
Concord,  a  brave  and  humane  citizen  and  lawyer.  His  independ- 
ence in  the  matter  of  church-going  and  his  remarks  on  the  preach- 
ing of  the  son  of  the  reverend  founder  of  the  town  caused  him 
to  be  fined  and  temporarily  disbarred.  Neither  he  nor  his  de- 
scendants were  subdued,  —  several  of  them  were  present  at  the 
Concord  Fight,  —  yet  it  should  be  said  that  punctual  attendance 
on  the  services  at  the  First  Church  in  Concord  has  distinguished 
the  family  for  several  generations,  and  they  have  not  flouted  the 
ministers.  Ebenezer  Rockwood,  eldest  son  of  "that  walking  in- 
tegrity," Squire  Samuel  Hoar,  was  born  in  Concord,  in  18 16. 
His  timbers  were  strong  Puritan  and  his  outward  appearance  often 
in  keeping,  but  too  much  of  the  discipline  had  caused  some  reac- 
tion unseen;  within  burned  a  flame  of  affection  and  charity,  and 
wider  culture,  and  especially  a  strong  sense  of  humour  mellowed 
the  type. 

Rockwood  entered  Harvard,  and  graduated  in  1835.  In  later 
years,  he  told  his  sister  how,  in  the  service  of  the  Med.  Fac,  he 
had  lain  on  his  back  through  wretched  midnight  hours  in  the 
belfry  of  Harvard  Hall  labouring  to  saw  off  the  tongue  of  the  bell 
which  summoned  students  to  morning  prayer.  It  will  be  seen  how 
his  life  thereafter  wiped  out  this  sin  against  religion  and  his  be- 
loved Alma  Mater.  One  of  his  classmates  said  that  Hoar  was, 
from  the  first,  the  pride  and  ornament  of  his  class.  He  gave  the 
English  oration  at  Commencement,  and  his  life  thereafter  exem- 
plified its  theme,  "Christian  Philosophy,  its  Practical  Applica- 
tion."   Richard  H.  Dana  was  for  a  time  his  classmate. 

A  year  beyond  the  Alleghanies,  as  a  schoolmaster  at  Pittsburg, 

^  It  was  in  her  honour  that  the  Judge  founded  the  scholarship  at  Raddiffe  College. 


64  The  Saturday  Club 

was  admirable  treatment  to  give  the  country  boy  and  Harvard 
student  enlargement  and  perspective.  Then  he  returned  to  Con- 
cord and  the  study  of  law.  Lowell,  three  classes  behind  him,  was 
presently  sent  up  to  Concord,  rusticated  "for  continued  neglect 
of  college  duties,"  and  thus  a  lifelong  friendship  began.  Lowell 
pleasantly  records  this  in  verse,  long  after:  — 

"  I  know  the  village,  —  I  was  sent  there  once 
A-schoolin',  'cause  to  home  I  played  the  dunce ; 
An'  I  've  ben  sence  a-visitin'  the  Jedge, 
Whose  garding  whispers  with  the  river's  edge,. 
Where  I  've  sot  mornin's,  lazy  as  the  bream, 
Whose  on'y  business  is  to  head  upstream,  — 
(We  call  'em  punkin-seed) ;  or  else  in  chat 
Along  'th  the  Jedge,  who  covers  with  his  hat 
More  wit  an'  gumption  an'  shrewd  Yankee  sense 
Than  there  is  mosses  on  an  ole  stone  fence." 

The  elder's  steadying  influence  was  doubtless  good  for  Lowell, 
and  the  younger's  poetic  enthusiasm  probably  broadened  Hoar's 
poetic  range.  And  yet  the  latter  had  a  taste  for  the  classics  in 
College  days,  and,  conversant  from  early  childhood  with  the  stately 
English  and  imagery  of  the  Bible,  then  with  the  plain  yet  dra- 
matic Pilgrim^s  Progress,  and,  later,  with  Milton  and  Shakspeare, 
his  taste  was  elevated  and  his  strong  memory  well  stored.  His  apt 
or  witty  quotations  all  through  life  showed  this.  He  had  the  in- 
estimable fortune  of  the  influence  of  his  elder  sister  Elizabeth. 
She  lived  close  by  him  caring  for  their  father  and  mother.  He 
visited  them  every  evening  when  in  town.  The  beauty  of  her 
character,  sensitive  to  all  that  was  fair  and  noble  in  nature  or  in 
literature,  in  men  and  women,  affected  in  turn  the  village  in 
which  she  passed  her  quiet  home  life.  Mr.  Emerson  said  of  her, 
"Elizabeth  Hoar  consecrates."  He  regarded  her  as  a  sister  and 
she  formed  a  bond  between  him  and  her  brother,  as  having  been 
betrothed  to  Emerson's  beloved  brother  Charles  who  faded  away 
in  quick  consumption.    She  never  married. 

Young  Rockwood  Hoar  immediately  made  his  mark  at  the 
Middlesex  Bar.  In  his  early  practice  before  it,  he  was  constantly 
pitted  against  Benjamin  F.  Butler  and  won  the  verdict  in  almost 
every  case.    Governor  Greenhalge  said:  "It  is  not  too  much  to 


Kbenezer  Rockwood  Hoar  6  5 

say  that  he  wielded  at  will  that  fierce  democracy.  His  will  was  law 
because  he  brought  it  under  the  law." 

Mr.  Hoar  took  a  holiday  In  1847  and  crossed  the  Atlantic  for 
the  only  time  In  his  busy  life.  The  writer  wishes  to  record  an 
exploit  of  the  Judge,  bearing  witness  to  his  love  for  the  classics 
and  to  his  personal  prowess.  He  told  me  that,  when  he  was  In 
Rome  and  his  party  were  going  to  leave  next  morning,  one  of  them 
said  at  dinner,  "Well,  you  haven't  swum  across  the  Tiber  yet, 
after  all,"  for  the  Concord  man  had  wished  to  know  just  what 
Horatlus  Cocles's  feat  was,  and  had  said  he  meant  to  do  it  if  he 
could.  Well,  next  morning  he  rose  at  four,  got  the  porter  to  unlock 
the  door,  went  along  the  Corso  and  through  the  Porto  del  Popolo 
and  down  to  the  river-bank  above  the  city,  where  houses  were  few, 
stripped  and  swam.   But 

"  The  troubled  Tyber  chafing  with  her  shores  " 

was  strong,  and  he  was  swept  down  In  a  long  diagonal.  This  was 
more  than  he  had  calculated  on,  but,  like  Adam  walking  in  the 
garden,  he  walked  upstream,  and  swam  back  to  as  near  his 
clothes  as  possible,  and  without  exhaustion.  At  breakfast  he  re- 
marked to  his  companions,  "If  I  had  n't  swum  the  Tiber,  as  you 
said,  last  night,  I  have  now  swum  It  twice." 

His  short  holiday  stored  his  mind  with  noble  impressions  of  the 
past.  Then  he  returned  to  the  Republic  and  threw  his  manhood 
into  the  present,  the  struggle  for  right  against  temporary  gain. 
When,  In  the  Massachusetts  Senate,  Boston  manufacturers,  high 
In  social  position,  deprecated  some  resolutions  against  encroaching 
slavery  in  fear  lest  they  should  offend  the  South,  the  firm  voice 
of  Hoar  rang  out  In  answer:  "I  think,  Mr.  President,  that  It  Is 
quite  as  desirable  that  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  should 
represent  its  conscience  as  Its  cotton."  This  was  the  solving  word 
in  the  Whig  Party,  and  the  young  lawyer  became  a  strong  cham- 
pion in  the  small  force  which  fought  on  to  a  victory  in  twenty 
years. 

Mr.  Hoar  stood  on  a  firm  foundation  of  time-hallowed  religion, 
law,  usage,  and  neighbourly  kindness.  New  notions  he  tested 
somewhat  rudely  by  common  sense.  He  had  no  hospitality  for  the 


66  The  Saturday  Club 

troubled  or  wild  questioners  of  society  who  thronged  the  ways  in 
his  young  manhood.  But  he  was  clear-eyed  and  sure  on  basal 
principles  of  right  and  wrong. 

In  1849  Mr.  Hoar  was  appointed  a  Justice  of  the  Court  of 
Common  Pleas.  To  him  in  his  judicial  capacity  firmly  and  justly 
exercised  for  years,  this  tribute  was  paid.^  "He  illustrated  in 
a  very  remarkable  manner  .  .  .  how  immensely  the  individuality 
and  personal  genius  of  the  judge  can  add  to  the  weight  of  his 
official  utterances.  The  great  judgments  which  abide,  and  which 
become  the  landmarks  of  the  law,  derive  their  chief  importance, 
not  from  their  relation  to  positive  constitutions,  but  from  their 
relation  to  universal  reason  and  to  the  underlying  verities  and 
forces  of  morality;  and  that  relation  it  is  the  business  of  a  man  to 
discover  and  to  state.  In  a  great  cause,  presented  for  final  adjudi- 
cation, the  question  and  the  man  meet;  but  the  man  is  much  the 
larger  term  in  the  equation."  A  bit  of  history,  little  known,  show- 
ing how  Judge  Hoar  measured  up  to  this  standard  under  the 
grievous  conditions  of  the  time,  should  find  a  place  even  in  this 
brief  sketch  of  the  man. 

Shortly  after  his  appointment,  the  year  that  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  was  passed,  followed  the  humiliation  of  Massachusetts  and 
of  Boston  In  their  returning  to  slavery,  under  that  statute,  Sims, 
and  later.  Burns.  In  1854  (^^^  year  before  the  Club  was  founded), 
in  a  suit  arising  from  an  attempted  rescue  in  the  latter  case, 
Judge  Hoar,  deeply  stirred,  charged  the  jury  to  this  effect:  He 
tells  them  that  this  law  Is  binding  upon  all  citizens  as  having  been 
enacted  by  Congress,  approved  by  the  President,  and  held  to  be 
valid  by  the  Supreme  Court,  yet  grants  that  its  decision  was  based 
upon  authority  and  not  on  right,  hence,  later,  it  may  be  held  to 
be  unconstitutional;  then,  considering  the  civic  duty  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  public  justice,  he  admits  that,  ij  he  were  giving 
his  private  view,  he  might  say,  "That  statute  seems  to  me  to  evince 
a  more  deliberate  and  settled  disregard  of  all  principles  of  consti- 
tutional liberty  than  any  other  enactment  which  has  ever  come 
under  my  notice.  You,  Gentlemen,  might  each  of  you  enter- 
tain similar  private  opinions.    But  of  what  avail  is  it,  and  what 

^  By  Mr.  Frank  Golding. 


Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar  6  7 

right  have  you  or  I  to  act  upon  these  opinions?"  He  then  ex- 
plains that  it  could  never  have  been  intended  by  the  framers  of 
our  government  that  a  rule  of  law  should  be  dependent  upon  the 
individual  opinion  of  a  judge  or  juror  called  to  administer  it.  The 
only  safe  rule  is  for  the  citizen  to  regard  such  a  law's  validity  as  a 
question  settled.  He  then  admits  that  a  wicked  law  may  be  passed 
even  in  a  republic,  and  says,  "If  a  statute  is  passed  which  any 
citizen,  examining  his  duty  by  the  best  light  which  God  has  given 
him,  .  .  .  believes  to  be  wicked,  one  which,  acting  under  the  law 
of  God,  he  ought  to  disobey,  unquestionably  he  ought  to  disobey 
that  statute.  .  .  .  I  suppose  that  any  man  who  would  seriously  deny 
that  there  is  anything  higher  than  human  law  must  ultimately 
deny  the  existence  of  the  Most  High.  But,  Gentlemen,  a  man  whose 
private  conscience  leads  him  to  disobey  a  law  recognized  by  the 
community  must  take  the  consequences.  It  is  a  matter  solely 
between  him  and  his  Maker.  He  should  take  good  care  .  .  .  that 
his  private  opinion  does  not  result  from  passion  or  prejudice,  but, 
if  he  believes  it  is  his  duty  to  disobey,  he  must  be  prepared  to 
abide  by  the  result,  and  the  laws  .  .  .  must  be  enforced,  though  it 
be  to  his  grievous  harm.  It  will  not  do  for  the  public  authori- 
ties to  recognize  his  private  opinion  as  a  justification  of  his  acts." 
Of  Judge  Hoar,  as  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  said,  "Whenever 
and  wherever  it  was  struck,  the  material  of  which  he  was  made 
returned  a  true  ring." 

Mr.  Adams  also  wrote  of  the  membership  of  the  Club:  "Alone 
among  the  prominent  members  of  the  bar  that  I  have  named, 
Judge  Hoar  and  Richard  H.  Dana  —  those  two  —  had  a  distinctly 
literary  element  in  their  composition.  .  .  .  Literary  men  instinc- 
tively recognized  that  it  was  there.  This  was  most  apparent  at 
the  Saturday  Club.  The  angle  of  contact  in  the  two  was  different, 
and  well  worthy  of  notice.  They  were  both  remarkable  men,  .  .  . 
they  would  have  distinguished  themselves  anywhere  or  at  any 
time.  Shakspeare,  Moliere,  Edmund  Burke,  Samuel  Johnson, 
Walter  Scott,  or  Goethe  would  have  delighted  in  their  company; 
and  blind  Milton's  countenance  would  have  lighted  up,  if  upon 
a  Sunday  afternoon  he  could  have  looked  forward  to  an  hour's 
call  from  his  friend,  and  brother  Puritan,  Rockwood  Hoar.    But 


68  T^he  Saturday  Club 

while  Dana  found  his  point  of  contact  with  the  literary  man  in 
his  wealth  of  imagination  and  his  conversational  power,  that 
of  Hoar  lay  in  his  shrewd  common-sense  perception,  his  keen 
wit,  and  his  genuine,  homely  sense  of  humour.  So  Emerson  loved 
him;  Hawthorne  studied  him;  Lowell  paid  tribute  to  him;  .  .  . 
He  walked  with  them  in  their  peculiar  province  as  their  equal." 

At  the  Club,  the  town-  and  the  country-members  refreshed 
each  other.  The  Judge  shone  there  in  his  wisdom  and  his  wit. 
It  was  his  delight  to  enter  the  lists  in  conversation,  especially 
with  Lowell  and  Holmes.  Mr.  Norton  said  it  was  delightful  when 
the  Judge  and  Lowell  got  to  talking  together.  They  knew  and 
liked  each  other  so  well,  and  were  entirely  free  with  one  another. 
Lowell  knew  that  Hoar  was  holding  him  as  an  equal  in  wit,  and 
fenced  carefully.  In  Lowell's  poem  on  Agassiz  after  the  death  of 
that  great  and  genial  man,  he  devotes  some  stanzas  to  the  Club, 
and  pictures  it  with  Agassiz  presiding,  and,  describing  Emerson, 
he  uses  this  happy  Yankee  simile:  — 

"  Listening  with  eyes  averse  I  see  him  sit, 
Pricked  with  the  cider  of  the  Judge's  wit, 
Ripe-hearted  home-brew,  fresh  and  fresh  again." 

Mr.  William  G.  Russell  said  of  it:  "There  is  a  Yankee  wit,  as 
different  in  its  type  from  English  or  Gallic  wit  as  is  the  flavour, 
the  aroma,  of  our  Baldwin  apple  from  that  of  the  southern  olive. 
There  are  sudden  turns  of  thought  which,  precipitated  into  terse, 
clear,  sharp  forms  of  speech,  like  crystals,  we  could  no  more  fail 
to  recognize  as  of  New  England  origin  than  we  could  fail  to  know 
the  granite  of  our  Quincy  quarry."  But,  like  an  over-athletic 
school-boy,  the  Judge  was  sometimes  thoughtlessly  rough  in  his 
play.  Mr.  Fields  said,  "An  opening  for  his  wit  he  could  not  bring 
himself  to  let  slip  —  it  would  seem  to  him  a  crime  —  'Opportu- 
nity is  fleeting'  —  he  shot  his  shaft;  the  dazzle  of  the  wit  hid  from 
him  the  mortification  which  the  other  party  tried  not  to  show." 
His  considerate  and  sensitive,  though  loyal  and  loving  sister 
Elizabeth  well  said  of  her  brother,  in  my  hearing,  "Rockwood 
does  n't  know  when  he  bites  your  head  off."  A  friend  remarked 
that,  whether  in  court  or  at  a  feast,  "he  was  never  at  a  loss  for  an 


Kbenezer  Rockwood  Hoar         69 

authority  in  point,  or  an  apt  illustration  from  history  or  romance, 
or  from  proverb,  psalm,  or  parable  from  the  Book  of  Books;  yet  for 
his  law  and  his  conduct  he  relied,  and  safely  relied,  chiefly  on 
that  strong,  native,  sound  common-sense  with  which  he  was  born, 
and  which  he  applied  to  cases,  to  men,  and  to  the  affairs  of  life." 
Judge  Hoar  was  a  member  of  the  Joint  High  Commission  ap- 
pointed to  negotiate  a  treaty  for  the  settlement  of  differences, 
arising  from  the  war,  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain. 
One  day,  perhaps  at  a  dinner,  the  British  members  expressed 
much  interest  in  the  practice  of  registering  deeds  here.  They 
thought  the  institution  an  excellent  American  invention.  The 
Judge  explained  it,  but  told  them  that  they  were  In  error  in  deem- 
ing it  new,  for  there  was  written  evidence  that  it  was  employed 
by  the  Greeks  centuries  before  the  Christian  era.  The  English 
statesmen  were  utterly  incredulous  of  his  statement.  But  the 
Judge  went  on  with  serious  face,  "Yes,  not  only  did  they  register 
their  deeds,  bpt  they  were  familiar  with  the  doctrine  of  Construc- 
tive Noticg,  for  you  will  reniemb^r  in  the  Anthology,  — 

'  Athenian  iEschylus,  Euphorion's  son, 
Buried  in  Gela's  earth  these  lines  declare, 
His  deeds  are  registered  at  Marathon, 
Known  to  the  deep-haired  Mede  who  met  him  there.' " 

The  Judge's  forceful  Integrity  and  blunt  candour  made  him 
unpopular  among  the  politicians,  who  brought  President  Grant 
reluctantly  to  request  his  resignation  from  the  office  of  Attorney- 
General,  the  Senate  having  already  rejected  his  nomination  as  a 
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  in  1869.  On  this  event,  which  will 
be  further  mentioned  in  the  general  history  of  the  Club,  Mr. 
Emerson  thus  commented  in  his  journal:  "I  notice  that  they 
who  drink  for  some  time  the  Potomac  water  lose  their  relish  for 
the  water  of  the  Charles  River,  the  Merrimac,  and  the  Connecti- 
cut. But  I  think  the  public  health  requires  that  the  Potomac 
water  should  be  corrected  by  copious  Infusions  of  these  provin- 
cial streams.  Rockwood  Hoar  retains  his  relish  for  the  Musketa- 
quld." 

The  Judge  was  a  main  pillar  of  the  old  First  Church  in  Concord, 


70  The  Saturday  Club 


which  had  passed  from  liberal  Orthodoxy  into  Channing  Uni- 
tarianism.  His  niece  speaks  of  "The  power  in  him  of  a  strong  in- 
herited religious  faith,  for,  though  he  made  that  faith  his  own,  it 
was  his  fathers'  God,  interpreted  by  him,  that  he  worshipped,  and 
the  faith  soothed  his  irritable  nerves,  and  gave  him  in  disappoint- 
ment and  sorrow  a  dignified  quiet."  The  spread  of  Episcopacy 
among  New  England  towns  he  was  inclined  to  regard  as  an  un- 
warrantable intrusion.  He  liked  to  tell  of  his  remonstrance  to 
the  Right  Reverend  Phillips  Brooks,  —  "Bishop,  how  is  it  that,  in 
your  liturgy,  you  pray  that  we  may  be  delivered  from  heresy  and 
schism,  and  yet  are  proceeding  to  break  in  upon  our  good  record 
in  Concord,  where  there  has  been  no  schism  in  the  Church  for 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years.?"  Yet  he  held  the  good  Bishop  in 
high  esteem.  He  also  valued  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  for  the 
special  distinction  it  gives  to  his  beloved  town,  — "O  God  who 
art  the  Author  of  good  and  the  lover  of  Concord."  On  the  other 
hand,  he  told  a  classmate,  an  Episcopalian,  that  he,  for  one,  was 
not  content  to  go  through  this  world  as  a  "miserable  sinner." 

His  love  for  Harvard  College  was  like  a  son's  love  for  his  mother. 
President  Walker,  of  Harvard,  spoke  of  him  as  "a  devoted  friend 
of  the  College  which  he  has  been  able  to  serve  in  a  thousand  ways 
by  the  wisdom  of  his  counsels  and  the  weight  of  his  character." 
Emerson  said  of  his  speech  at  an  Alumni  Dinner  that  it  was  a 
perfect  example  of  Coleridge's  definition  of  genius,  "The  carrying 
the  feelings  of  youth  into  the  powers  of  manhood";  and  the  audi- 
ence were  impressed  and  delighted  with  the  rare  combination  of 
the  innocence  of  a  boy  with  the  faculty  of  a  hero. 

Judge  Hoar  was  tall  and  well-made;  a  little  heavy  in  gait  after 
middle^  life,  but  never  obese.  A  columnar  erectness  with  broad 
front,  like  a  male  caryatid,  symbolized  his  strong  uprightness,  the 
likeness  heightened,  because,  though  sedentary,  he  never  allowed 
his  head  to  stoop,  and  seldom  turned  it,  rather  turning  entirely 
toward  the  person  to  whom  he  spoke,  and  bringing  his  searching 
blue  eyes  upon  him.  His  brows  were  level,  his  face  absolutely  un- 
der command,  his  mouth  shut  firmly.  Through  his  gold-bowed  spec- 
tacles he  seemed  to  look  into  the  person  before  him.  His  dignified 
presence,  which  could  be  formidable,  could  also  surprise  by  genial 


Kbenezer  Rockwood  Hoar  7 1 

and  affectionate  expression.  His  features  were  fairly  good,  his 
beard  and  hair  Hght  brown  until  the  years  whitened  them.  His 
portrait  by  Frank  H.  Tompkins  in  the  Harvard  Union  Is  ad- 
mirable. 

As  long  as  strength  allowed,  the  Judge  never  failed,  if  he  could 
help  it,  in  joining  the  happy  fellowship  of  the  Saturday  dinners. 
There  he  was  most  genial,  and  always  kind  to  the  younger  mem- 
bers, and  his  presence  assured  the  success  of  the  meeting. 

E.  W.  E. 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

None  of  the  original  members  of  the  Club  are  more  closely  identi- 
fied with  it,  in  the  memories  or  imaginations  of  present  mem- 
bers, than  the  author  of  the  "Biglow  Papers."  He  is  recalled 
or  pictured  to-day  as  an  inevitable  selection,  when  the  material 
for  membership  was  first  canvassed;  one  born  for  it,  as  other  men 
had  been  born  for  the  purple.  Yet  there  are  surprisingly  few  ref- 
erences to  the  Club  in  Lowell's  Letters.  His  witty  talk,  like  that 
of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  is  known  to  have  "  kept  the  table  on 
a  roar,"  and  to  have  touched  upon  an  extraordinarily  wide  range 
of  topics,  but  the  flashing  phrases  have  been  long  forgotten,  and 
there  is  scarcely  an  authentic  tradition  of  a  single  hon  mot  uttered 
in  the  Parker  House  by  either  of  these  two  preeminently  witty 
members  of  the  Club.  "Transitory,  very,"  as  Carlyle  used  to  say 
of  all  human  things;  yet  even  the  half-imagined  echoes  of  such 
voices,  and  the  shadows  of  such  vital  and  delightful  figures,  are 
caught  at  by  the  imaginations  of  their  successors.  They  remain 
"dear  guests  and  ghosts." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  when  the  Saturday  Club  was  or- 
ganized, Lowell  was  not  yet  forty.  But  he  had  already  produced 
much  of  his  most  characteristic  work  as  a  poet,  had  won  a  distinct 
place  as  a  prose  writer  and  lecturer  on  literary  topics,  and  had  be- 
gun his  career  as  a  teacher  at  Harvard.  Among  all  the  New  Eng- 
land men  of  letters  he  was  the  natural  choice  as  the  first  editor  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly  at  its  foundation  in  1857.  He  was  a  known 
man. 

Lowell's  central  position  among  the  original  members  of  the 
Saturday  Club  was  also  due  to  his  fortunate  combination  of 
many  representative  local  traits  and  habits  of  mind.  His  iden- 
tification with  the  community  was  complete.  The  son  of  the 
Reverend  Charles  Lowell,  the  amiable  and  conservative  minister 
of  the  West  Church  of  Boston,  he  was  born  in  18 19  at  "Elm- 
wood,"  the  famous  "Oliver"  house  of  Tory  Row,  Cambridge, 
which  had  passed  into  the  possession  of  the  Lowell  family  in  18 18. 


yames  Russell  Lowell  7  3 

There  the  poet  and  diplomatist  died  in  1891,  and  his  lifelong  affec- 
tion for  the  home  of  his  birth  is  familiar  to  all  readers  of  his  letters 
and  his  verse.  In  the  ample  library  of  his  father  he  learned  that 
love  of  books  which  became  one  of  the  master  passions  of  his 
life;  and  under  the  noble  elms  and  pines  of  the  thirty-acre  estate, 
and  along  the  banks  of  the  neighbouring  and  friendly  Charles, 
the  boy  transmuted  his  keen  impressions  of  natural  beauty  into 
his  first  attempts  at  rhythmic  utterance.  At  Mr.  Wells's  school, 
kept  in  another  of  the  famous  old  mansions  of  Tory  Row,  and  at 
Harvard  College,  where  he  became  a  member  of  the  class  of  1838, 
young  Lowell  developed  humour,  the  power  of  shrewd  Yankee 
observation,  and  a  somewhat  abnormal  faculty  of  sentiment: 
—  perhaps  an  inheritance  from  his  over-imaginative  mother.  He 
rebelled  at  academic  discipline,  though  his  rustication  at  Concord, 
in  the  summer  of  his  Senior  year,  brought  him  golden  recompense 
in  an  acquaintance  with  Emerson.  In  less  than  twenty  years 
thereafter  the  two  poets  were  destined  to  be  fellow-members  of 
the  Saturday  Club,  but  in  1838  the  exile  ventured,  in  the  Class 
Poem  which  he  was  then  composing,  to  indulge  in  some  boyish  sat- 
ire upon  Emerson's  transcendentalism.  The  author  of  "Nature," 
"The  American  Scholar,"  and  "The  Divinity  School  Address" 
was  in  the  summer  of  1838  very  much  upon  the  mind  of  Cam- 
bridge and  Boston! 

This  sensitiveness  to  the  shades  and  humours  of  local  feeling, 
tempered  with  a  detachment  which  at  times  took  the  form  of 
sheer  boyish  rebellion,  was  characteristic  of  Lowell.  In  his  at- 
tachment to  his  native  soil,  and  his  innate  perception  of  its  qual- 
ity, it  need  scarcely  be  said  that  the  author  of  "Cambridge  Thirty 
Years  Ago"  and  of  the  "Biglow  Papers"  was  pure  Yankee;  quick 
of  eye,  whimsical  of  tongue,  irreverently  reverent,  and  passionately 
loyal  to  his  Puritan  stock.  He  was  saved  from  narrowness  by  his 
volatile  exuberance  —  just  as  Holmes  was  saved  by  his  wit,  and 
Emerson  by  his  serene  excursions  into  the  upper  air.  All  three  of 
them  were  artists,  each  after  his  own  fashion;  and  all  three,  like 
Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  and  Whittier,  their  future  commensals 
of  the  Saturday  Club,  helped  to  create  the  Ideal  image  of  their 
native  New  England.    But  Lowell,  though  lacking  the  absolute 


76  'The  Saturday  Club 

corded  transgression  against  the  spirit  of  general  good-fellowship 
which  he  had  done  so  much  to  create. 

Even  when  the  Club  was  first  established,  Lowell  was  already 
rich  in  cosmopolitan  experience.  The  habit  of  travel  and  study- 
in  Europe  had  been  steadily  increasing  among  Boston  and  Har- 
vard men,  since  that  epoch-making  return  of  George  Ticknor  and 
Edward  Everett  from  their  European  studies,  at  the  time  of 
Lowell's  birth.  Emerson  had  visited  Europe  in  search  of  broader 
horizons;  Holmes  and  Longfellow  had  made  long  sojourns  there 
for  professional  study;  young  Richard  Dana's  Two  Years  before 
the  Mast  had  not  only  stimulated  other  youths  like  Herman  Mel- 
ville to  follow  his  seafaring  example,  but  had  given  many  a  young 
Bostonian,  like  Francis  Parkman,  the  spirit  of  adventurous 
travel.  There  were  few  strictly  homekeeping  minds  among  the 
earlier  members  of  the  Saturday  Club.  Even  men  like  Whittier, 
who  were  prevented  by  narrow  circumstances  or  professional  la- 
bours from  making  the  "grand  tour,"  astonish  us  to-day  by  their 
intimate  knowledge  of  European  politics  and  social  life.  Lowell's 
chance  had  not  come  until  1851  and  1852,  when  his  American  rep- 
utation as  a  poet  was  well  established.  After  his  appointment  as 
Longfellow's  successor  in  the  Smith  Professorship  in  1855,  he 
spent  a  year  in  Germany  and  Italy  in  preparation  for  his  new 
duties.  After  his  resignation  in  the  spring  of  1872,  he  passed  two 
years  in  Europe.  He  was  minister  in  Madrid  for  three  years  (1877- 
80)  and  in  London  for  five  (1880-85) ;  and  after  his  diplomatic  ca- 
reer had  ended  he  was  constant  in  his  visits  to  England.  From 
the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  connection  of  the  Saturday  Club, 
therefore,  his  associates  profited  by  his  vivid  memory  of  pic- 
turesque Europe,  his  extraordinary  intimacy  with  foreign  lan- 
guages and  literatures,  and,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  by  the 
rich  social  intimacies  with  all  that  was  best  in  that  London  life 
in  which  he  took  such  keenly  human  enjoyment. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Lowell  should  compare  the  table-talk 
to  which  he  had  listened  and  contributed  in  England  with  the 
conversations  of  his  old  friends  of  the  Club.  If  we  keep  in  mind 
the  quality  of  the  chosen  New  Englanders  of  Lowell's  day,  and 
remember  the  local  loyalty  of  the  author  of  "A  Certain  Con- 


yames  Russell  Lowell  7  7 

descension  in  Foreigners,"  we  need  not  be  surprised  at  the  pref- 
erence which  Lowell  expressed.  His  words  written  from  London 
to  Charles  E.  Norton  in  1883  are  well  known:  "I  have  never 
seen  civilization  at  so  high  a  level  in  some  respects  as  here.  In 
plain  living  and  high  thinking,  I  fancy  we  have,  or  used  to  have, 
the  advantage,  and  I  have  never  seen  society  on  the  whole  as 
good  as  I  used  to  meet  at  the  Saturday  Club."  He  had  already 
written  to  Longfellow  in  1880:  "I  hope  the  Club  still  persists. 
I  have  never  found  such  good  society  and  don't  expect  it." 

Leslie  Stephen,  whose  intimacy  with  Lowell  dated  from  a  visit 
to  Elmwood  in  1863,  has  made  an  interesting  remark  upon  one 
characteristic  of  the  Saturday  Club  circle:  — 

"Lowell  said  that  he  had  never  seen  equally  good  society  in 
London.  Colonel  Higginson  observes  that  Holmes  and  Lowell 
were  the  most  brilliant  talkers  he  ever  heard,  but  suggests  a 
qualification  of  this  comparison.  *^They  had  not,'  he  said,  'the 
London  art  of  repression,'  and  monopolized  the  talk  too  much. 
They  could,  he  intimates,  overlook  the  claims  of  their  inter- 
locutors. He  once  heard  Lowell  demonstrating  to  the  author  of 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  that  Tom  Jones  was  the  best  novel  ever  writ- 
ten; while  Holmes  was  proving  to  her  husband,  the  divinity  pro- 
fessor, that  the  pulpit  was  responsible  for  all  the  swearing.  Dr. 
and  Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe,  it  is  implied,  must  have  been  reduced  to 
ciphers  before  they  could  be  the  passive  recipients  of  such  doc- 
trine." 

Leslie  Stephen  adds:  "The  'art  of  repression,'  I  fancy  is  very 
often  superfluous  in  London.  ...  A  society  which  included  all 
the  best  scholars  and  men  of  genius  within  reach  of  Boston  had 
abundance  of  the  raw  material  of  talk.  They  might  be  compared 
in  point  of  talent  even  with  the  men  who  met  Johnson  at  the 
'Turk's  Head'  and  certainly  had  as  great  a  variety  of  interests 
in  men  and  books.  They  had,  it  would  seem,  fewer  jealousies,  or, 
as  the  sneerer  would  put  it,  were  readier  for  mutual  admiration, 
and  such  admiration,  when  it  has  a  fair  excuse,  is  the  best  security 
for  forming  the  kind  of  soil  in  which  the  flower  of  talk  grows  spon- 
taneously." 

Lowell's  attachment  to  the  members  of  the  Saturday  Club 


78  The  Saturday  Club 

circle  Is  not,  of  course,  to  be  measured  merely  by  his  few  direct 
references  to  the  Club  itself.  His  affection  for  individual  mem- 
bers like  Norton  is  known  to  every  reader  of  his  letters,  and  his 
poems  contain  tributes  to  Longfellow,  Agassiz,  Whittier,  and  many 
other  of  his  associates.  These  verses,  printed  elsewhere  in  this 
sketch  of  the  history  of  the  Club,  need  no  additional  comment 
here.  The  explanation  of  his  central  place  in  the  famous  circle  is 
after  all  very  simple:  he  was  a  most  lovable  man. 

That  there  were  reserves  in  his  subtle  and  complex  nature  no 
one  knew  better  than  his  Cambridge  friends.  Yet  his  character 
was  known  to  all.  Its  essential  Puritanism  had  withstood  the 
strain  of  his  "storm  and  stress"  period  in  the  1840's;  his  faith  in 
his  countrymen  and  in  the  ideals  of  a  free  democracy  had  been 
tested  and  ennobled  by  the  agony  of  the  Civil  War;  and  during 
his  years  of  foreign  residence  as  a  representative  of  his  country 
his  old  associates  knew  how  flawless  and  proud  was  his  patriotism. 
His  career  had  served  to  illustrate  his  known  character;  and  the 
reputation  which  his  prose  and  verse  had  won  in  England  seemed 
to  his  old  associates  only  a  fit  recognition  of  the  learning,  the  wit, 
and  the  fine  imagination  which  had  been  familiar  to  them  from 
the  first.  Their  pride  in  Lowell's  cosmopolitan  achievements  was 
thus  a  natural  sequence  of  their  personal  affection  for  one  of  the 
friendliest  of  men.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  who  had  known  Lowell 
since  his  college  days,  once  remarked  that  none  of  the  reminis- 
cences and  biographies  of  Lowell  had  done  justice  to  his  unselfish- 
ness and  constant  generosity:  "It  seemed  enough  for  him  to  know 
that  another  man  was  in  need  for  him  to  find  out  how  to  relieve  it. 
I  have  some  very  interesting  letters  which  show  the  tact  with 
which  his  generosity  enabled  him  to  help  men  who  were  working 
their  way  through  college  and  whom  he  meant  to  help  somehow  or 
other." 

This  homely  local  tribute  may  be  set  side  by  side  with  the 
closing  paragraph  of  the  illuminating  letter  of  Leslie  Stephen  to 
Norton,  which  is  now  printed  as  an  appendix  to  Lowell's  Letters:  — 

"As  I  try  to  call  back  the  old  days,  I  feel  the  inadequacy  of 
attempted  description,  and  the  difficulty  of  remembering  the 
trifling  incidents  which  might  speak  more  forcibly  than  general 


yames  Russell  Lowell  7  9 

phrases.  But  I  have  one  strong  Impression  which  I  can  try  to 
put  Into  words.  It  Is  not  of  his  humour  or  his  keen  literary  sense, 
but  of  his  unvarying  sweetness  and  simplicity.  I  have  seen  him 
in  great  sorrow,  and  in  the  most  unreserved  domestic  Intimacy. 
The  dominant  Impression  was  always  the  same,  of  unmixed 
kindliness  and  thorough  wholesomeness  of  nature.  There  did 
not  seem  to  be  a  drop  of  bitterness  In  his  composition.  There  was 
plenty  of  virtuous  indignation  on  occasion,  but  he  could  not  help 
being  tolerant  even  towards  antagonists.  He  seemed  to  be  always 
full  of  cordial  good-will,  and  his  intellectual  power  was  used  not  to 
wound  nor  to  flatter,  but  just  to  let  you  know  directly  on  occa- 
sion, or  generally  through  some  Ingenious  veil  of  subtle  reserve, 
how  quick  and  tender  were  his  sympathies,  and  how  true  his  sense 
of  all  that  was  best  and  noblest  In  his  surroundings.  That  was 
the  Lowell  whom  I  and  mine  knew  and  loved ;  and  I  think  I  may 
say  that  those  to  whom  he  is  only  known  by  his  books  need  not 
look  far  to  discover  that  the  same  Lowell  is  everywhere  present 
in  them." 

Dr.  Holmes  told  a  friend  that  he  went  to  Elmwood  to  see  Lowell 
a  short  time  before  he  died.  He  found  him  lying  on  his  couch 
reading.  To  the  Doctor's  affectionate  questions  as  to  his  feelings 
he  answered:  "Oh,  I  suppose  I'm  in  pain;  I  always  am  more  or 
less,  but  look  here  [holding  up  his  book],  I've  been  reading  Roh 
Roy.  I  suppose  It  may  be  for  the  fortieth  time,  but  it  Is  just  as 
good  as  when  I  read  it  first."  When  Dr.  Holmes  went  home  he 
got  out  his  Rob  Roy,  but  In  vain;  he  could  not  get  interested  and 
wondered  how  his  friend  could.  No  anecdote  could  be  more  illu- 
minating as  to  the  essential  difference  In  taste  between  these  two 
old  men.  Lowell  remained  to  the  end  a  "Romanticist"  and 
Holmes  an  "Augustan." 

After  Lowell  had  passed  away.  Dr.  Holmes  wrote  to  Lady 
Harcourt,  the  daughter  of  Motley,  these  touching  words  about 
his  own  sense  of  solitude:  — 

Boston,  tst  November,  1891. 
Since  Lowell's  death,  I  have  felt   my  loneliness   more    than 
ever.    I  feel  as  if  all  the  world  were  falling  away  around  me.    At 


8o  The  Saturday  Club 

the  Saturday  Club,  yesterday,  there  was  not  a  single  member, 
except  myself,  of  the  time  when  your  father  was  of  us  at  the  table. 
Our  old  friend  Judge  Hoar  was  laid  up  with  rheumatism,  and  I 
was  the  only  relic  of  the  past.  I  went  to  see  Whittier  while  I  was 
in  the  country  and  had  a  pleasant  hour  with  him.  But  we  both 
feel  that  for  us  the  show  is  pretty  nearly  over.  The  green  curtain 
is  beginning  to  show  its  wrinkles  at  the  top  and  must  be  down 
before  long.    Lowell  is  deeply  lamented  and  sadly  missed. 

But  the  most  perfect  expression  of  wistful  longing  for  Lowell's 
companionship  is  a  poem  published  by  Longfellow  in  1878,  while 
his  fellow-poet  was  serving  his  country  as  Minister  in  Madrid. 
Read  to-day,  it  reveals  not  merely  the  affection  of  those  who  were 
admitted  to  Lowell's  intimacy  during  his  lifetime,  but  also  the 
"thoughts  unspoken  "  of  our  own  contemporaries  as  they  pass  the 
house  where  Lowell  was  born  and  where  he  died:  — 

THE  HERONS  OF  ELMWOOD 

Warm  and  still  is  the  summer  night, 

As  here  by  the  river's  brink  I  wander; 
White  overhead  are  the  stars,  and  white 

The  glimmering  lamps  on  the  hillside  yonder. 

Silent  are  all  the  sounds  of  day; 

Nothing  I  hear  but  the  chirp  of  crickets, 
And  the  cry  of  the  herons  winging  their  way 

O'er  the  poet's  house  in  the  Elmwood  thickets. 

Call  to  him,  herons,  as  slowly  you  pass 

To  your  roosts  in  the  haunts  of  the  exiled  thrushes, 

Sing  him  the  song  of  the  green  morass, 

And  the  tides  that  water  the  reeds  and  rushes. 

Sing  him  the  mystical  Song  of  the  Hem, 

And  the  secret  that  baffles  our  utmost  seeking; 

For  only  a  sound  of  lament  we  discern, 

And  cannot  interpret  the  words  you  are  speaking. 

Sing  of  the  air,  and  the  wild  delight 

Of  wings  that  uplift  and  winds  that  uphold  you, 

The  joy  of  freedom,  the  rapture  of  flight. 

Through  the  drift  of  the  floating  mists  that  infold  you ; 


yames  Russell  Lowell  8 1 

Of  the  landscape  lying  so  far  below, 

With  its  towns  and  rivers  and  desert  places; 
And  the  splendor  of  light  above,  and  the  glow 

Of  the  limitless,  blue,  ethereal  spaces. 

Ask  him  if  songs  of  the  Troubadours, 

Or  of  Minnesingers  in  old  black-letter, 
Sound  in  his  ears  more  sweet  than  yours, 

And  if  yours  are  not  sweeter  and  wilder  and  better. 

Sing  to  him,  say  to  him,  here  at  his  gate, 

Where  the  boughs  of  the  stately  elms  are  meeting, 

Some  one  hath  lingered  to  meditate. 
And  send  him  unseen  this  friendly  greeting; 

That  many  another  hath  done  the  same, 

Though  not  by  a  sound  was  the  silence  broken; 

The  surest  pledge  of  a  deathless  name 

Is  the  silent  homage  of  thoughts  unspoken. 

B.  P. 


JOHN  LOTHROP  MOTLEY 

In  a  well-known  passage  about  Boston  written  by  Dr.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  the  friend  and  biographer  of  Motley,  there  is 
a  humorous  life-history  of  a  typical  Bostonian  of  that  opulent  and 
conventional  social  world  into  which  Motley  was  born.  The 
Doctor  remarks  blandly:  — 

"What  better  provision  can  be  made  for  mortal  man  than  such 
as  our  own  Boston  can  afford  its  wealthy  children?  A  palace  on 
Commonwealth  Avenue  or  Beacon  Street;  a  country-place  at 
Framingham  or  Lenox;  a  seaside  residence  at  Nahant,  Beverly 
Farms,  Newport,  or  Bar  Harbor;  a  pew  at  Trinity  or  King's 
Chapel;  a  tomb  at  Mount  Auburn  or  Forest  Hills;  with  the  pros- 
pect of  a  memorial  stained  window  after  his  lamented  demise,  — 
is  not  that  a  pretty  programme  to  offer  a  candidate  for  human 
existence  ? " 

In  writing  that  passage  he  doubtless  had  no  thought  of  his 
friend,  whose  variations  from  the  conventional  type  are  at  least 
as  striking  as  his  conformity  to  it.  But  in  the  preface  to  ^  Mortal 
Antipathy,  Dr.  Holmes  sketches  the  career  of  Motley,  whose  me- 
moir he  had  just  been  writing,  in  a  single  felicitous  paragraph :  — 

"I  saw  him,  the  beautiful  bright-eyed  boy  with  dark  waving 
hair;  the  youthful  scholar,  first  at  Harvard,  then"  at  Gottingen 
and  Berlin,  the  friend  and  companion  of  Bismarck;  the  young 
author  making  a  dash  for  renown  as  a  novelist  and  showing  the 
elements  which  made  his  failures  the  promise  of  success  in  a  larger 
field  of  literary  labour;  the  delving  historian,  burying  his  fresh 
young  manhood  in  the  dusty  alcoves  of  silent  libraries,  to  come 
forth  in  the  face  of  Europe  and  America  as  one  of  the  leading 
historians  of  the  time;  the  diplomatist,  accomplished,  of  capti- 
vating presence  and  manners;  an  ardent  American,  and  in  due  time 
an  impassioned  and  eloquent  advocate  of  the  cause  of  freedom; 
reaching  at  last  the  summit  of  his  ambition  as  minister  at  the 
Court  of  St.  James.    All  this  I  seemed  to  share  with  him  as  I 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  83 

watched  his  career  from  his  birthplace  in  Dorchester,  and  the 
house  in  Walnut  Street  where  he  passed  his  boyhood,  to  the  palaces 
of  Vienna  and  London.  And  then  the  cruel  blow  which  struck 
him  from  the  place  he  adorned,  the  great  sorrow  that  darkened 
his  later  years;  the  invasion  of  illness,  a  threat  that  warned  of 
danger  and,  after  a  period  of  invalidism,  during  a  part  of  which 
I  shared  his  most  intimate  daily  life,  the  sudden,  hardly  unwel- 
come, final  summons.  Did  not  my  own  consciousness  migrate  or 
seem,  at  least,  to  transfer  itself  into  this  brilliant  life  history,  as 
I  traced  its  glowing  record  .f*" 

It  is  evident  from  these  words  that  none  of  the  original  mem- 
bers of  the  Club  made  a  more  vivid  personal  impression  upon  their 
contemporaries.  We  must  glance  first  at  a  few  of  the  prosaic 
facts  of  Motley's  youth.  The  son  of  a  prosperous  merchant, 
Thomas  Motley,  and  the  grandson  of  the  Reverend  John  Lothrop, 
he  was  born  in  Dorchester,  April  15,  18 14,  but  the  family  soon 
removed  to  Walnut  Street,  Boston.  The  boy  was  excessively 
delicate  and  high-spirited,  fond  of  Cooper  and  Scott,  of  plays 
and  declamation,  was  gifted  in  languages,  and  seems  to  have  been 
of  a  fastidious  and  somewhat  supercilious  disposition.  He  learned 
German  in  George  Bancroft's  school  at  Northampton,  and  en- 
tered Harvard  at  the  age  of  thirteen  in  the  class  of  183 1,  being  the 
youngest  man  in  that  class.  He  roomed  for  a  while  with  Thomas 
G.  Appleton,  later  a  fellow-member  of  the  Saturday  Club,  and 
was  greatly  admired  by  another  classmate,  Wendell  Phillips,  who 
was  perhaps  one  of  the  first  to  point  out  young  Motley's  singular 
resemblance  to  Lord  Byron  —  a  resemblance  which  Lady  Byron 
herself,  in  after  years,  often  mentioned  to  Motley.  He  was  grad- 
uated without  special  scholarly  distinction,  and  the  rules  of  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  had  to  be  stretched  a  little  in  order  to 
elect  him.  For  two  years  after  graduation  he  studied  in  Berlin 
and  Gottlngen,  and  became  an  intimate  friend  of  his  fellow-student 
Bismarck.  After  his  return  from  Europe  in  1834,  he  studied  law, 
married  Mary  Benjamin,  and  published  in  1839  an  unsuccess- 
ful novel,  Morton^s  Hope.  Failure  though  the  book  proved.  Dr. 
Holmes  thought  that  "in  no  other  of  Motley's  writings  do  we  get 
such  an  inside  view  of  his  character,  with  its  varied  impulses,  its 


8  4  The  Saturday  Club 

capricious  appetites,  its  unregulated  forces,  its  impatient  grasp  for 
all  kinds  of  knowledge." 

In  1 841,  Motley  was  appointed  Secretary  of  Legation  in  St. 
Petersburg,  though  he  served  for  a  few  months  only.  His  first  his- 
torical writing,  as  it  happens,  was  an  article  on  Russia  and  Peter 
the  Great,  in  the  North  American  Review  for  October,  1845.  In  the 
next  year  he  began  to  collect  materials  for  a  history  of  Holland, 
but  soon  paused  to  write  another  novel.  Merry  Mount,  which  was 
at  least  better  than  his  first,  and  to  serve  a  year  in  the  Massachu- 
setts House  of  Representatives. 

Then  came  Motley's  famous  interview  with  Prescott,  who  had 
himself  intended  to  write  the  story  of  Philip  the  Second  of  Spain, 
but  who  generously  encouraged  the  younger  man  to  enter  his 
field,  much  as  Irving,  years  before,  had  surrendered  the  subject 
of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico  to  Prescott.  A  letter  from  Motley 
to  WilHam  Amory  on  Prescott's  death  in  1859  tells  the  whole 
story.    Here  are  the  concluding  words:  — 

"Had  the  result  of  that  interview  been  different,  —  had  he  dis- 
tinctly stated,  or  even  vaguely  hinted,  that  it  would  be  as  well  if 
I  should  select  some  other  topic,  or  had  he  only  sprinkled  me  with 
cold  water  of  conversational  and  commonplace  encouragement, 
—  I  should  have  gone  from  him  with  a  chill  upon  my  mind,  and, 
no  doubt,  have  laid  down  the  pen  at  once;  for,  as  I  have  already 
said,  it  was  not  that  I  cared  about  writing  a  history,  but  that  I 
felt  an  inevitable  impulse  to  write  one  particular  history. 

"You  know  how  kindly  he  always  spoke  of  and  to  me;  and  the 
generous  manner  in  which,  without  the  slightest  hint  from  me, 
and  entirely  unexpected  by  me,  he  attracted  the  eyes  of  his  hosts 
of  readers  to  my  forthcoming  work,  by  so  handsomely  alluding 
to  it  in  the  Preface  to  his  own,  must  be  almost  as  fresh  in  your 
memory  as  it  is  in  mine. 

"And  although  it  seems  easy  enough  for  a  man  of  world-wide 
reputation  thus  to  extend  the  right  hand  of  fellowship  to  an  un- 
known and  struggling  aspirant,  yet  I  fear  that  the  history  of  lit- 
erature will  show  that  such  instances  of  disinterested  kindness  are 
as  rare  as  they  are  noble." 

From  1851  to  1856  Motley  lived  abroad  with  his  family,  work- 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  85 

ing  in  the  archives  at  Berlin,  Dresden,  The  Hague,  and  Brussels, 
in  search  of  material  for  his  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic.  He  was 
too  good  an  American  not  to  be  conscious  of  his  isolation.  In  a 
letter  to  his  father,  dated  Dresden,  December  23,  1852,  he  refers 
to  this,  and  incidentally  alludes  to  a  visit  he  had  just  received 
from  a  young  student  of  music  who  was  afterward  to  become  a 
member  of  the  Club:  — 

"The  fact  is,  no  interest  is  felt  in  America  or  American  insti- 
tutions among  the  European  public.  America  is  as  isolated  as 
China.  Nobody  knows  or  cares  anything  about  its  men,  or  its 
politics,  or  its  conditions.  It  is,  however,  known  and  felt  among  the 
lower  classes,  that  it  is  a  place  to  get  to  out  of  the  monotonous 
prison  house  of  Philistines,  in  which  the  great  unwashed  of  Europe 
continue  to  grind  eternally.  Very  little  Is  known  of  the  country, 
and  very  little  respect  is  felt  for  it,  but  the  fact  remains  that  Europe 
is  decanting  itself  into  America,  a  great  deal  more  rapidly  than  is 
to  be  wished  by  us.  .  .  .  Please  to  say  to  Mr.  Cabot  that  his  young 
friend  and  kinsman,  Mr.  Hlgglnson,^  presented  himself  not  long 
ago  to  us.  He  is  a  very  honest,  ingenuous,  intelligent  lad,  who  is 
taking  a  vacation  on  account  of  his  eyes." 

A  letter  to  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  from  Brussels,  in  No- 
vember, 1853,  shows  how  steadily  Motley  was  now  toiling:  — 

"Whatever  may  be  the  result  of  my  labours,  nobody  can  say 
that  I  have  not  worked  hard  like  a  brute  beast;  but  I  do  not  care 
for  the  result.  The  labour  is  in  itself  its  own  reward  and  all  I 
want." 

But  that  there  was  a  fascination  in  his  task  is  evidenced  by  a 
well-known  passage  from  his  second  book,  the  History  of  the 
United  Netherlands :  — 

"Thanks  to  the  liberality  of  many  modern  governments  of 
Europe,  the  archives  where  the  state  secrets  of  the  burled  cen- 
turies have  so  long  mouldered  are  now  open  to  the  student  of 
history.  To  him  who  has  patience  and  industry,  many  mysteries 
are  thus  revealed  which  no  political  sagacity  or  critical  acumen 
could  have  divined.  He  leans  over  the  shoulder  of  Philip  the  Second 
at  his  writing-table,  as  the  King  spells  patiently  out,  with  cipher- 

^  Major  Henry  Lee  Higglnson,  our  valiant  and  beneficent  member. 


86  T^he  Saturday  Club 

key  in  hand,  the  most  concealed  hieroglyphics  of  Parma,  or  Guise, 
or  Mendoza.  He  reads  the  secret  thoughts  of  '  Fabius '  [Philip  II] 
as  that  cunctative  Roman  scrawls  his  marginal  apostilles  on  each 
despatch;  he  pries  into  all  the  stratagems  of  Camillus,  Hortensius, 
Mucius,  Julius,  Tullius,  and  the  rest  of  those  ancient  heroes  who 
lent  their  names  to  the  diplomatic  masqueraders  of  the  sixteenth 
century;  he  enters  the  cabinet  of  the  deeply  pondering  Burghley, 
and  takes  from  the  most  private  drawer  the  memoranda  which 
record  that  minister's  unutterable  doubtings;  he  pulls  from  the 
dressing-gown  folds  of  the  stealthy,  soft-gliding  Walslngham  the 
last  secret  which  he  has  picked  from  the  Emperor's  pigeon-holes 
or  the  Pope's  pocket,  and  which  not  Hatton,  nor  Buckhurst,  nor 
Leicester,  nor  the  Lord  Treasurer  is  to  see:  nobody  but  Elizabeth 
herself;  he  sits  invisible  at  the  most  secret  councils  of  the  Nassaus 
and  Barneveldts  and  Buys,  or  pores  with  Farnese  over  coming 
victories  and  vast  schemes  of  universal  conquest;  he  reads  the 
latest  bit  of  scandal,  the  minutest  characteristic  of  king  or  minis- 
ter, chronicled  by  the  gossiping  Venetians  for  the  edification  of 
the  Forty;  and  after  all  this  prying  and  eavesdropping,  having 
seen  the  cross-purposes,  the  bribings,  the  windings  in  the  dark, 
he  is  not  surprised  if  those  who  were  systematically  deceived  did 
not  always  arrive  at  correct  conclusions." 

In  those  words  there  is  the  thrill  of  professional  pride  felt  by 
the  successful  historian,  but  in  1856,  when  the  Dutch  Republic 
was  at  last  ready  for  the  publisher,  it  was  difficult  for  Motley  to 
find  a  publisher.  But  Chapman  agreed  to  print  the  London  edi- 
tion, at  the  author's  expense,  and  the  Harpers  undertook  an 
American  edition.  Motley's  letter  to  his  father  from  Rome  in 
May,  1856,  bears  interesting  witness  to  the  significance  which 
was  then  attached  to  the  critical  opinion  of  Edwin  P.  Whipple:  — 

"  I  perceive  that  the  Harpers  have  published  the  Dutch  Repub- 
lic a.t\3is,t.  No  doubt  they  are  correct  judges  of  the  correct  time; 
but  I  must  say  that  I  should  have  liked  to  have  had  it  published 
in  time  to  allow  a  review  in  the  April  number  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can. You  say  nothing  of  this  in  your  letter.  Have  you  observed 
in  one  of  Mary's  letters  a  request  to  send  a  copy  to  Sam  Hooper 
and  to  E.  P.  Whipple.'*    The  latter  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  87 

writers  in  the  country,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  experienced 
reviewers." 

But  before  Motley  returned  to  Boston,  in  the  autumn  of  that 
year,  it  was  evident  that  the  reviewers  and  the  general  public 
were  united  in  one  huge  chorus  of  praise  for  the  Dutch  Republic. 
No  such  American  triumph  in  the  field  of  history  had  been  seen 
since  Prescott's  first  volume,  published  twenty  years  before. 
French,  Dutch,  German,  and  Russian  translations  swiftly  followed 
one  another. 

It  was  during  the  winter  of  1856-57,  immediately  after  his 
victory,  that  Motley  became  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club. 
Apparently  his  formal  membership  antedates  by  a  few  months 
that  of  Holmes,  for  he  writes  to  the  Doctor  during  a  visit  to 
England,  in  September,  1857:  "Remember  me  kindly  to  Lowell 
and  Agassiz  and  Felton,  Longfellow,  Tom  Appleton,  and  all  the 
members  of  our  Club,  which  I  hope  you  have  regularly  joined  by 
this  time." 

Motley's  correspondence,  from  1857  onward,  has  many  agree- 
able references  to  the  Saturday  Club.  He  was  in  England  from 
1858  to  1 861,  working  on  the  United  Netherlands^  but  Dr.  Holmes 
Writes  him  in  February  of  the  latter  year:  "The  Club  has  flourished 
greatly,  and  proved  to  all  of  us  a  source  of  the  greatest  delight. 
I  do  not  believe  there  ever  were  such  agreeable  periodical  meet- 
ings in  Boston  as  these  we  have  had  at  Parker's.  We  have  missed 
you,  of  course,  but  your  memory  and  your  reputation  were  with 
us." 

In  March  Longfellow  was  requested  to  congratulate  him,  in 
the  name  of  the  Club,  upon  the  success  of  his  new  volumes:  — 

Cambridge,  March  14,  1861, 
My  dear  Motley:  — 

At  the  last  dinner  of  our  "Saturday  Club"  Agassiz  proposed 
that  a  friendly  greeting  be  sent  you,  with  our  hearty  congratula- 
tions on  the  success  of  your  new  History.  The  proposition  passed 
by  acclamation,  and  I  was  requested  to  write  to  you  to  that  effect, 
which  I  do  with  great  pleasure,  adding  In  my  own  behalf  that  no 
one  rejoices  in  your  new  literary  triumph  more  than  I  do,  unless 


88  "The  Saturday  Club 

it  be  your  father.    It  was  always  a  delight  to  me  to  see  his  face, 
and  now  more  so  than  ever. 
■  I  think  you  have  added  ten  happy  years  to  his  life. 

Henry  W.  Longfellow. 

Motley  returned  to  Boston  shortly,  and  gives  this  pleasant 
picture  of  the  Club  in  a  letter  to  his  wife:  — 

"Saturday  we  had  a  delightful  Club  dinner.  Agassiz,  who  was 
as  delightful  as  ever,  and  full  of  the  kindest  expressions  of  ap- 
preciation and  affection  for  Lily,  and  Holmes,  who  is  absolutely 
unchanged,  which  is  the  very  highest  praise  that  could  be  given, 
—  Lowell,  Peirce,  Tom  Appleton,  Dana,  Longfellow,  Whipple. 
There  were  three  absent,  Felton,  Emerson,  and  Hawthorne,  and 
it  says  something  for  a  club  in  which  three  such  vacancies  don't 
make  a  desolation." 

It  was  in  this  year  of  1861  that  President  Lincoln  appointed 
Motley  Minister  to  Austria.  He  held  that  post  for  six  years,  was 
personally  most  popular  in  the  highest  circles  of  Vienna  society, 
and  performed  his  diplomatic  duties  punctiliously.  No  more  ar- 
dent American  ever  represented  us  in  a  foreign  country.  Motley 
felt  terribly  at  times  the  strain  of  the  Civil  War,  but  had,  as  he 
wrote  to  his  mother  in  1862,  "an  abiding  faith  in  the  American 
people;  in  its  courage,  love  of  duty,  and  determination  to  pursue 
the  right  when  it  has  made  up  its  mind."  His  letters  to  Holmes 
and  to  Thomas  G.  Appleton  contain  many  affectionate  references 
to  the  Saturday  Club.  One  quotation  must  suffice.  He  writes  to 
Holmes  in  February,  1862:  "Always  remember  me  most  sincerely 
to  the  Club,  one  and  all.  It  touches  me  nearly  when  you  assure 
me  that  I  am  not  forgotten  by  them.  To-morrow  is  Saturday  and 
the  last  of  the  month.  We  are  going  to  dine  with  our  Spanish  col- 
league. But  the  first  bumper  of  the  Don's  champagne  I  shall 
drain  to  the  health  of  my  Parker  House  friends." 
'  Twice  during  his  stay  in  Vienna  Motley  had  the  happiness  of 
receiving  visits  from  his  old  friend  Bismarck,  whose  notes  in 
English  to  Motley  are  too  delightful  to  be  passed  over:  — 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  89 

Berlin,  April  17,  1863. 
I  never  pass  by  old  Logler's  House,  in  the  Friedrlch-strasse, 
without  looking  up  at  the  windows  that  used  to  be  ornamented 
by  a  pair  of  red  slippers  sustained  on  the  wall  by  the  feet  of  a 
gentleman  sitting  in  the  Yankee  way,  his  head  below  and  out  of 
sight.  I  then  gratify  my  memory  with  remembrance  of  "Good  old 
colony  times  when  we  were  roguish  chaps."  ^ 

Berlin,  May  23,  1864. 
Why  do  you  never  come  to  Berlin?  It  is  not  a  quarter  of  an 
Americanos  holiday  journey  from  Vienna,  and  my  wife  and  me 
should  be  so  happy  to  see  you  once  more  in  this  sullen  life.  When 
can  you  come,  and  when  will  you  ?  I  swear  that  I  will  make  out  the 
time  to  look  with  you  on  old  Logier's  quarters,  and  drink  a  bottle 
with  you  at  Gerolt's,  where  they  once  would  not  allow  you  to  put 
your  slender  legs  upon  a  chair.  Let  politics  be  hanged,  and  come 
to  see  me.  I  promise  that  the  Union  Jack  shall  wave  over  our  house 
and  conversation  and  the  best  old  hock  shall  pour  damnation  upon 
the  rebels. 

Motley's  reply  to  one  of  these  letters  contains  the  following 
paragraph:  — 

My  DEAR  OLD  Bismarck:  — 

.  .  .  You  asked  me  in  the  last  letter,  before  the  present  one, 
"if  we  knew  what  we  were  fighting  for"  —  I  can't  let  the  ques- 
tion go  unanswered.  We  are  fighting  to  preserve  the  existence  of 
a  magnificent  commonwealth  —  and  to  annihilate  the  loathsome 
institution  of  negro  slavery.  If  men  can't  fight  for  such  a  cause 
they  had  better  stop  fighting  furthermore.  Certainly  since  man- 
kind ever  had  a  history  and  amused  themselves  with  cutting  each 
other's  throats,  there  never  in  the  course  of  all  the  ages  was  better 
cause  for  war  than  we  have. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Motley's  two  letters  to  the  Lon- 
don Times  in  1870,  setting  forth  the  necessity  of  maintaining  the 

^  In  1888,  Prince  Bismarck,  in  his  great  speech  to  the  German  Reichstag,  quoted  this 
song,  adding  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  learnt  it  from  his  "dear  deceased  friend,  John 
Motley." 


90  The  Saturday  Club 

Union  at  all  costs,  had  made  a  deep  impression  upon  thinking  Eng- 
lishmen. Our  associate,  William  Everett,  who  was  in  England 
at  that  time,  said  of  those  letters  after  Motley's  death:  "No  un- 
official, and  few  official,  men  could  have  spoken  with  such  au- 
thority, and  been  so  certain  of  obtaining  a  hearing  from  English- 
men. Thereafter,  amid  all  the  clouds  of  falsehood  and  ridicule 
which  we  had  to  encounter,  there  was  one  lighthouse  fixed  on  a 
rock  to  which  we  could  go  for  foothold,  from  which  we  could  not 
be  driven,  and  against  which  all  assaults  were  impotent." 

But  perhaps  the  most  striking  evidence  of  Motley's  perception 
of  the  true  spirit  of  America  is  to  be  found  in  his  letter  of  condo- 
lence to  Mrs.  Lincoln  after  the  President's  assassination :  — 

Vienna,  May  ist,  1865, 
...  I  am  afraid  to  trust  myself  to  speak  of  him,  lest,  even  to 
you,  I  should  seem  over-enthusiastic  in  his  praises.  But  as  I  have 
never  hesitated  whilst  he  was  living  to  express  on  all  proper  occa- 
sions my  sense  of  his  character,  I  do  not  see  why  I  should  be  silent 
now,  when  he  has  become  one  of  the  blessed  martyrs  of  history. 
It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  he  was  the  good  angel  of  our 
country.  I  had  never  the  honour  of  much  personal  intercourse 
with  him,  but  on  the  very  first  interview  I  was  impressed  with 
that  great  characteristic  of  his,  the  noblest  with  which  a  man  can 
be  endowed,  a  constant  determination  to  do  his  duty.  A  single 
phrase  of  his  inaugural  address  of  this  year  —  "firmness  in  the 
right  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right"  —  is  as  good  a  summary  of 
his  own  characteristics  from  his  own  lips  as  could  be  made  by  a 
lengthened  eulogy.  ... 

No  country  has  ever  been  blessed  with  a  more  virtuous  chief 
magistrate.  Most  painfully  have  I  studied  almost  his  every  act 
and  utterance  during  the  momentous  period  in  which  his  name 
has  been  identified  with  that  of  his  country,  and  day  by  day 
has  my  veneration  Increased  for  his  integrity,  his  directness  of 
purpose,  his  transparent  almost  childlike  sincerity  and  truth.  So 
much  firmness  has  rarely  been  united  with  such  tenderness  of 
heart.  And  ...  it  was  an  additional  source  of  pride  for  us  all  to 
watch  how  his  intellect  seemed  daily  to  expand  and  to  become 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  9  ^ 

more  and  more  robust  as  the  load  upon  it  in  such  an  unparalleled 
epoch  became  ever  more  severe.  And  this  is  the  surest  test  of  a 
great  mind.  Truly  in  his  case  statesmanship  might  seem  an  easy 
lesson  to  learn,  for  with  him  "simple  truth  was  utmost  skill,"  yet, 
how  much  nobler  a  world  it  would  be  if  all  rulers  and  lawgivers 
had  studied  in  the  same  school.  ... 

The  story  of  Motley's  resignation  from  his  Vienna  post  is  told 
at  length  by  Holmes  and  need  not  be  repeated  here.  Secretary 
Seward  undoubtedly  failed  to  understand  Motley's  temperament. 
On  the  other  hand,  Motley's  quick  temper  probably  forced  him 
into  positions  which  a  more  steadily  poised  man  might  have 
avoided.  President  Johnson  seems  to  have  had  little  understand- 
ing of  Motley's  sensitiveness  and  little  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  his  services  at  the  Court  of  Austria. 

The  two  final  volumes  of  the  History  of  the  United  Netherlands 
appeared  in  1868.  In  June  of  that  year  Motley  returned  to  Boston 
and  lived  at  No.  2  Park  Street. 

A  passage  from  Whipple's  Recollections  of  Eminent  Men  gives 
a  vivid  picture  of  the  impression  now  made  by  Motley  upon  his 
old  friends  of  the  Club:  — 

"In  the  summer  of  1868  he  returned  with  his  family  to  Boston, 
and  was  warmly  greeted  by  all  his  old  friends.  He  appeared  to 
be  in  the  full  vigour  of  bodily  and  mental  health,  and  his  powers 
of  conversation  were  such  as  surprised  the  most  redoubtable 
talkers  of  that  city.  .  .  . 

"Perhaps,  as  Dr.  Holmes  has  described  the  Club  generally  in  a 
note  to  his  biography,  it  may  not  be  an  indecorum  to  lift  the  veil 
from  one  of  its  dinners  in  which  he  bore  a  main  part  in  the  con- 
versational achievements.  Motley  laid  down  some  proposition, 
which  Holmes,  of  course,  instantly  doubted,  and  then  Lowell 
plunged  in,  differing  both  from  Motley  and  Holmes.  A  trian- 
gular duel  ensued,  with  an  occasional  ringing  sentence  thrown 
in  by  Judge  Hoar  for  the  benevolent  purpose  of  increasing  a  com- 
plication already  sufficient  to  task  the  wit  and  resource  of  the 
combatants.  In  ordinary  discussion  one  person  is  allowed  to  talk 
at  least  for  a  half  or  a  quarter  of  a  minute  before  his  brother  ath- 


92  'The  Saturday  Club 

letes  rush  in  upon  him  with  their  replies;  but  in  this  debate  all 
three  talked  at  once,  with  a  velocity  of  tongue  which  fully  matched 
their  velocity  of  thought.  Still,  in  the  incessant  din  of  voices, 
every  point  made  by  one  was  replied  to  by  another  or  ridiculed 
by  a  third,  and  was  instantly  followed  by  new  statements  and 
counter-statements,  arguments  and  counter-arguments,  hits  and 
retorts,  all  germane  to  the  matter,  and  all  directed  to  a  definite 
end.  The  curiosity  of  the  contest  was  that  neither  of  the  combat- 
ants repeated  anything  which  had  been  once  thrown  out  of  the 
controversy  as  irrelevant,  and  that  while  speaking  all  together  the 
course  of  the  discussion  was  as  clear  to  the  mind  as  though  there 
had  been  a  minute's  pause  between  statement  and  reply.  The  dis- 
cussion was  finished  in  fifteen  minutes;  if  conducted  under  the 
ordinary  rules  of  conversation,  it  would  have  lasted  a  couple  of 
hours,  without  adding  a  new  thought,  or  fact,  or  stroke  of  wit 
applicable  to  the  question  in  debate.  The  other  members  of  the 
Club  looked  on  in  mute  wonder  while  witnessing  these  feats  of 
intellectual  and  vocal  gymnastics.  If  any  other  man  than  Judge 
Hoar  had  ventured  in,  his  voice  and  thought  would  have  been 
half  a  minute  behind  the  point  which  the  discussion  had  reached, 
and  would  therefore  have  been  of  no  account  in  the  arguments 
which  contributed  to  bring  it  to  a  close.  On  this  occasion  I  had  no 
astronomical  clock  to  consult;  but,  judging  by  the  ear,  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  in  swiftness  of  utterance  Motley  was  two- 
sixteenths  of  a  second  ahead  of  Holmes,  and  nine-sixteenths  of  a 
second  ahead  of  Lowell." 

Perhaps  it  was  at  one  of  these  Club  dinners  in  1868  that  Mot- 
ley made  the  playful  remark  which  Holmes  thought  "one  of  the 
three  wittiest  things  that  have  been  said  in  Boston  in  our  time": 
"Give  me  the  luxuries,  and  I  will  dispense  with  the  necessaries,  of 
life." 

In  1869  Motley  was  appointed  Minister  to  England  by  Presi- 
dent Grant.  This  great  honour  proved  to  be  the  tragedy  of  Mot- 
ley's public  career.  Shortly  after  his  arrival  in  England  he  ex- 
pressed himself  to  Lord  Clarendon,  the  British  Foreign  Secretary, 
in  terms  that  were  disapproved  by  Mr.  Fish,  our  Secretary  of 


yohn  LjOthrop  Motley  93 

State.  This  incident  seemed  to  be  closed,  however,  when,  to 
Motley's  astonishment,  on  the  1st  of  July,  1870,  Secretary  Fish 
requested  his  resignation.  As  Motley  did  not  resign,  he  was  re- 
called in  November.  It  is  unnecessary  here  to  go  into  the  details 
of  this  much-discussed  quarrel  between  Mr.  Motley  and  his 
Government.  Motley's  friendship  with  Sumner,  who  had  fallen 
under  the  displeasure  of  General  Grant,  seemed  to  have  something 
to  do  with  his  recall.  But  Mr.  Fish  explained  the  recall  in  these 
terms:  "The  reason  for  Mr.  Motley's  removal  was  found  in  con- 
siderations of  state.  He  misrepresented  the  Government  on  the 
Alabama  question,  especially  in  the  two  speeches  made  by  him 
before  his  arrival  at  his  post." 

That  Motley's  friendship  for  Sumner  seemed  to  the  Saturday 
Club  circle  to  be  an  element  in  the  unfortunate  situation  is  clear 
from  some  Interesting  reminiscences  of  Governor  Jacob  D.  Cox, 
of  Ohio,  in  his  Atlantic  article,  entitled  "How  Judge  Hoar  ceased 
to  be  Attorney-General."  It  is  quoted  here  as  the  only  instance 
on  record  when  "  the  eminent  men  of  the  Saturday  Club  attempted, 
as  a  body,  to  use  their  influence  at  Washington." 

"General  Sherman  was  in  Boston  at  the  time  of  my  visit  and 
I  was  invited,  with  him,  to  dinner,  by  the  Saturday  Club,  of  which 
Judge  Hoar  was  a  member.  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and 
Holmes  were  all  there,  and  I  need  not  say  it  was  an  occasion  to 
remember.  It  only  concerns  my  present  story,  however,  to  tell 
what  occurred  just  before  we  parted.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  presid- 
ing and,  unexpectedly,  I  found  that  he  was  speaking  to  me,  in 
the  name  of  the  Club.  He  said  that  they  had  been  much  disturbed 
by  rumours,  then  current,  that  Mr.  Motley  was  to  be  recalled 
from  England,  on  account  of  Senator  Sumner's  opposition  to  the 
San  Domingo  Treaty.  They  would  be  very  far,  indeed,  from  seek- 
ing to  influence  any  action  of  the  President  which  was  based  on 
Mr.  Motley's  conduct  in  his  diplomatic  duties,  of  which  they  knew 
little  and  could  not  judge;  but  they  thought  the  President  ought 
to  know  that  if  the  rumour  referred  to  was  well  founded,  he  would, 
in  their  opinion,  offend  all  the  educated  men  of  New  England. 
It  could  not  be  right  to  make  a  disagreement  with  Mr.  Sumner 
prejudice  Mr.  Motley  by  reason  of  the  friendship  between  the  two. 


94  The  Saturday  Club 

"I  could  only  answer  that  no  body  of  men  had  better  right  to 
speak  for  American  men  of  letters  and  that  I  would  faithfully 
convey  the  message. 

"On  my  return  to  Washington,  I  first  made  known  to  Mr.  Fish 
the  duty  that  had  been  committed  to  me:  not  only  did  he  inter- 
pose no  objection  to  it;  he  expressed  an  earnest  wish  that  it  might 
change  the  President's  purpose. 

"I  took  an  early  opportunity  of  reporting  to  General  Grant 
what  the  eminent  men  of  the  Saturday  Club  said  to  him.  His 
only  reply  was : '  I  made  up  my  mind  to  remove  Mr.  Motley  before 
there  was  any  quarrel  with  Mr.  Sumner.'  This  he  said  in  an  im- 
patient tone,  as  if  repelling  interference." 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  precise  cause  of  Motley's  removal, 
it  was  a  shock  from  which  he  never  fully  recovered.  Yet  he  set 
himself  to  work  stubbornly  upon  his  final  task,  the  Life  and 
Death  oj  John  of  Barneveld.  He  followed  with  the  keenest  interest 
the  new  political  developments  in  Europe  resulting  from  the  War 
of  1870.  One  of  his  letters  to  Bismarck,  written  from  London  just 
before  his  recall,  and  urging  Bismarck  to  make  moderate  terms 
with  France,  has  become  very  famous  because  of  the  profane  com- 
ment which  Prince  Bismarck  scribbled  upon  the  margin  of  the 
letter  —  a  comment  that  has  gained  fresh  interest  since  1914:  — 

London,  9th  September,  '70. 
...  I  am  not  authorized  or  disposed  on  this  occasion  to  ex- 
press the  sense  of  our  Government  or  people.  But,  as  I  believe, 
he  would  be  an  injudicious  friend  of  France  who  should  counsel 
her  to  proceed  as  if  —  without  radical  change  in  the  fortunes  of 
men  —  she  could  help  accepting  such  honourable  terms  as  Prussia 
might  dictate,  so  he  would  be  a  sincere  friend  of  Germany  who 
should  modestly  but  firmly  suggest  that  the  more  moderate  the 
terms  on  the  part  of  the  conqueror  at  this  supreme  moment,  the 
greater  would  be  the  confidence  inspired  by  the  future,^  and  the 
more  secure  the  foundations  of  a  durable  peace,  and  the  more 
proud  and  fortunate  the  position  and  character  of  United  Germany. 

*  The  words  "damn  confidence"  were  added  by  Prince  Bismarck  in  the  margin  of  the 
letter. 


yohn  Lothrop  Motley  95 

.  .  .  The  world  is  shuddering  at  the  prospect  of  the  possibility  of 
a  siege  of  Paris  and  assault,  and  all  the  terrible  consequences  of 
taking  such  a  city  by  storm. 

I  cannot  bear  the  thought  that  the  lustre  of  what  is  now  the 
pure  and  brilliant  though  bloody  triumph  of  Germany  should  be 
tarnished  by  even  a  breath.  .  .  . 

Accept  the  warmest  good  wishes  and  congratulations  of  your 
sincere  friend  as  of  old, 

J.  L.  Motley. 

Motley's  last  book,  John  of  Barneveld,  appeared  in  1874.  His 
wife  died  on  the  last  day  of  that  year,  and  from  that  time  onward 
Motley  seemed  to  his  friends  a  broken  man.  He  visited  Boston 
once  more  in  1875,  but  his  daughters  were  now  married  in  Eng- 
land, and  he  soon  returned  thither.  He  lingered  in  failing  health, 
until  March,  1877.  Motley  was  buried  with  his  wife  in  Kensal 
Green  Cemetery.  The  grandchildren  and  great-grandchildren  of 
this  American,  whose  stock  ran  back  to  the  "good  old  colony 
times,"  are  all  English.  His  oldest  grandson,  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan,  —  a  direct  descendant  of  the  dramatist,  —  fell  in  the 
British  Army  during  the  Boer  War.  It  will  perhaps  be  thought 
fitting,  therefore,  to  let  an  Englishman  utter  the  final  word  about 
the  achievements  of  our  American  historian.  In  a  sermon  preached 
at  Westminster  Abbey  on  June  3,  1877,  Dean  Stanley  said:  — • 

"We  sometimes  ask  what  room  or  place  is  left  in  the  crowded 
temple  of  Europe's  fame  for  one  of  the  Western  World  to  occupy. 
But  a  sufficient  answer  is  given  in  the  work  which  was  reserved  to 
be  accomplished  by  him  who  has  just  departed.  So  long  as  the 
tale  of  the  greatness  of  the  House  of  Orange,  of  the  siege  of  Ley- 
den,  of  the  tragedy  of  Barneveld,  interests  mankind,  so  long  will 
Holland  be  indissolubly  connected  with  the  name  of  Motley,  in 
the  union  of  the  ancient  culture  of  Europe,  with  the  aspirations  of 
America  which  was  so  remarkable  in  the  ardent,  laborious,  soar- 
ing soul  that  has  passed  away." 

B.  P. 


BENJAMIN  PEIRCE 

Our  great  mathematician  and  astronomer  was  born  in  Salem  in 
1809.  "The  humanities,"  and  mathematics,  which  led  him  to  the 
infinite  divine,  came  to  him  through  his  parentage,  for  his  father, 
whose  name  he  bore,  first  scholar  in  his  class  at  Cambridge,  became 
the  librarian  and  the  historian  of  the  College,  and  the  brother 
of  his  mother,  Lydia  Nichols,  was  a  mathematician.  Nathaniel 
Bowditch,  translating  and  annotating  the  volumes  of  Laplace's 
Alechanigue  Celeste,  as  they  appeared,  made  use  of  young  Peirce 
on  the  work,  when  he  graduated.  Years  later,  after  Bowditch's 
death,  Peirce  completed  this  task.  It  was  said  that  not  more  than 
twelve  men  in  Europe,  or  three  in  America,  could  read  and  ap- 
preciate his  work. 

After  teaching  for  a  time  at  Mr.  Cogswell's  remarkable  school 
at  Northampton,  where,  as  pupils,  several  of  our  members  re- 
ceived their  early  education,  Peirce  was  called  to  Harvard  as  tutor, 
and  became,  in  1832,  Hollis  Professor  of  Mathematics  and  Natural 
Philosophy.  Ten  years  later  he  became  Perkins  Professor  of 
Astronomy  and  Mathematics.  He  held  a  position  in  the  Univer- 
sity for  nearly  half  a  century. 

Of  the  great  mathematician  as  an  instructor  several  of  his  pu- 
pils who  ventured  on  the  higher  planes  of  the  science  have  written. 
These  were  youths  who,  though  they  could  follow  him  but  a  few 
steps  in  that  rarefied  atmosphere,  had  the  privilege  of  a  glimpse 
now  and  then  into  shining  infinities  wherein  this  giant  sped 
rejoicing  on. 

Colonel  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  wrote:  "He  gave  us 
his  'Curv'es  and  Functions,'  in  the  form  of  lectures;  and  some- 
times, even  while  stating  his  propositions,  he  would  be  seized 
with  some  mathematical  inspiration,  would  forget  pupils,  notes, 
everything,  and  would  rapidly  dash  ofi'  equation  after  equation, 
following  them  out  with  smaller  and  smaller  chalk-marks  into  the 
remote  corners  of  the  blackboard,  forsaking  his  delightful  task 
only  when  there  was  literally  no  more  space  to  be  covered,  and 
coming  back  with  a  sigh  to  his  actual  students.  There  was  a  great 


Benjamin  Peirce  97 

fascination  about  these  interruptions;  we  were  present,  as  it 
seemed,  at  mathematics  in  the  making;  it  was  Hke  peeping  into  a 
necromancer's  cell,  and  seeing  him  at  work;  or  as  if  our  teacher 
were  one  of  the  old  Arabian  algebraists  recalled  to  life.  The  less 
we  knew  of  what  was  going  on,  the  more  attractive  was  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  man;  and  his  fine  face  and  impressive  presence 
added  to  the  charm." 

Another  pupil,  Mr.  Frank  B.  Sanborn,  bore  this  personal  tes- 
timony to  the  Master,  a  few  years  later:  "To  most  young  men 
Peirce,  in  his  own  mathematical  demesne,  was  formidable  or 
quite  inaccessible,  the  warder  of  an  enchanted  tower,  whose 
banner  bore  a  strange  device  (being  interpreted,  it  said  Excelsior)^ 
whose  speech  was  foreign,  and  who  paced  his  battlements  with  a 
far-looking  manner,  — 

His  thoughts  commercing  with  the  skies.' 

But  when  this  wizard  stepped  down  from  his  post,  crossed  his  moat, 
and  opened  his  garden  gate,  nothing  could  be  more  attractive 
than  the  vistas  and  plantations  he  opened  to  our  view.  I  remem- 
ber as  but  yesterday,  though  it  is  well-nigh  thirty  years  ago,  the 
blank  confusion  with  which  the  ill-instructed  youth  confronted  his 
problems  and  the  Sphinx  who  gave  them  out,  and  the  thrill  of 
enthusiasm  in  the  same  youth  when  the  range  and  scope  of  the 
mathematical  sciences  was  flashed  upon  his  imagination  in  the 
fascinating  lectures,  of  which  he  gave  us  only  too  few.  Few  men 
could  suggest  more  while  saying  so  little,  or  stimulate  so  much 
while  communicating  next  to  nothing  that  was  tangible  and  com- 
prehensible. The  young  man  that  would  learn  the  true  meaning  of 
apprehension  as  distinct  from  comprehension^  should  have  heard 
the  professor  lecture,  after  reciting  to  him." 

Still  another  pupil,  Mr.  George  A.  Flagg,  who,  ten  years  later, 
elected  the  higher  mathematical  course,  remembers  Professor 
Peirce's  manner  to  this  small  class  as  kind  and  genial,  perhaps 
as  respecting  their  hardihood  in  attempting  this  steep  and  rugged 
pathway,  through  bafiling  clouds,  though  leading  to  the  stars 
and  infinitely  beyond.  His  talk  was  informal,  often  far  above  their 
heads.    "Do  you  follow  me.^"  asked  the  Professor  one  day.    No 


9  8  The  Saturday  Club 

one  could  say  Yes.  "I'm  not  surprised,"  said  he;  "I  know  of  only- 
three  persons  who  could."  At  Paris,  the  year  after,  at  the  great 
Exposition,  Flagg  stood  before  a  mural  tablet  whereon  were  in- 
scribed the  names  of  the  great  mathematicians  of  the  earth  for 
more  than  two  thousand  years.  Archimedes  headed,  Peirce  closed 
the  list;  the  only  American.  The  arrangement  of  names  here  is 
exactly  as  on  the  tablet:  — 

MATHEMATICIENS  DISTINGUES 
archimede 

EUCLIDE 

SCIPIO  FERREA 

CARDAN 

BERNOUILLI 

MERCATOR 

NAPIER 

WALLIS  LAPLACE 

EULER  d'aLEMBERT 

LAGRANGE 

CLAIRAUT 

TAYLOR 

FONTAINE 

DEMORGAN 

HERSCHEL 

LACROIX 

PLAYFAIR 

AIRY 

PEIRCE 

This  honour  of  the  Master  delighted  the  pupil,  and,  on  his  re- 
turn,''he  did  not  fail  to  carry  the  news  to  him;  he  had  not  heard  it. 

To  these  testimonies  I  must  add  the  human,  pleasant  memories 
of  this  wanderer  in  celestial  galaxies,  when  he  was  a  young  pro- 
fessor, written  in  the  Harvard  Book,^  by  Colonel  Henry  Lee,  in 
1875:  — 

^  Vol.  I,  chapter  on  "University  Hall,"  among  other  amusing  and  kindly  descriptions 
of  the  professors  of  other  days. 


Benjamin  Peirce  99 

"  Why  we  should  have  given  him  the  diminutive  name  of '  Benny ' 
I  cannot  say,  unless  as  a  mark  of  endearment  because  he  could 
fling  the  iron  bar  upon  the  Delta  farther  than  any  undergraduate; 
or,  perhaps  because  he  always  thought  the  bonfire  or  disturbance 
outside  the  college  grounds,  and  not  inside,  and  conducted  him- 
self accordingly.  His  softly  lisped  'Sufficient'  brought  the  blun- 
derer down  from  the  blackboard  with  a  consciousness  of  failure  as 
overwhelming  as  the  severest  reprimand.  There  was  a  delightful 
abstraction  about  this  absorbed  mathematician  which  endeared  him 
to  the  students,  who  hate  and  torment  a  tutor  always  on  the  watch 
for  offences,  and  which  confirmed  the  belief  in  his  peculiar  genius." 

Hon.  Robert  S.  Rantoul  in  a  recent  letter  has  given  me  the  fol- 
lowing reminiscences,  especially  interesting  as  showing  the  impor- 
tant relation  of  the  Reverend  Thomas  Hill  to  Peirce:  — 

"The  famous  experiment  of  the  pendulum  hung  inside  of 
Bunker  Hill  Monument  from  the  top,  to  demonstrate  the  rota- 
tion of  the  earth,  was  all  the  rage  in  my  day  in  College.  We 
thought  we  had  arrived  at  an  explanation  of  it,  which  we  dis- 
cussed together  with  much  enthusiasm,  until  Professor  Peirce 
volunteered  one  day  to  explain  it.  After  that  nobody  thought 
he  understood  it  at  all.  Dr.  Andrew  P.  Peabody  and  Peirce 
began  together  as  teachers  in  mathematics.  Peirce's  pupils  used 
to  resort  to  Peabody  for  explanations.  To  send  a  beginner  to 
Peirce  to  learn  mathematics  seemed  like  committing  an  infant 
child  to  a  giant  to  learn  to  walk.  The  tradition  obtained  in  my 
day  that  Peirce  would,  now  and  then,  become  obsessed  with  a 
new  conceit  of  some  kind,  and  in  the  heat  of  it  would  become  so 
alarmed  lest  the  discovery  should  escape  him  before  he  could  re- 
duce it  to  writing,  that  he  would  rush  to  the  livery-stable  behind 
the  church,  hire  a  chaise,  and  make  all  haste  to  Waltham  where 
the  Reverend  Thomas  Hill  was  then  settled.  Peirce  could  not 
clearly  describe  to  Hill  just  what  was  disturbing  his  mind,  but 
Hill,  who  had  no  such  original  inspirations  to  trouble  him,  could 
better  express  in  words  the  new  proposition  when  at  last  he  under- 
stood it.  Hill  would  gradually  fathom  the  mind  of  Peirce  and, 
towards  morning,  send  him  home  to  Cambridge  with  his  problem 
stated  on  paper  in  his  pocket  and  his  thoughts  at  rest." 


I  CO 


The  Saturday  Club 


Fortunatel7  for  the  boys  of  unmathematical  mind,  struggling 
through  the  compulsory  mathematics  of  the  two  first  years,  they 
came,  in  the  writer's  day,  under  the  instruction  of  Peirce's  son 
James,  who,  clear  and  exacting  in  statement,  could  yet  allow  for 
their  limitations  and  help  them  up  the  steps.  There  were  gaps, 
too,  for  the  father  had  written  the  textbook,  and,  as  Rantoul  said, 
"did  not  hesitate  to  over-ride  Euclid  ...  in  his  condensed  and 
simplified  mode's  of  demonstration."  When  the  anxious  youth, 
worrying  through  his  demonstration,  at  a  step  in  the  argument 
slighted  by  the  father  as  absurdly  trivial,  fairly  quoting  the  book, 
said,  "It  may  be  easily  seen  how"  —  the  shrill  and  precise  voice 
of  the  son  came  in  —  ''''How  is  it  easily  seen.''"  and  the  faithfully 
memorized  demonstration  collapsed,  and  a  clearer-minded  pupil 
was  called  upon  to  show  the  bridge. 

For  authority  was  nothing  to  Peirce.  He  took  his  own  path  up 
the  mountain.  The  world  was  stirred  over  Leverrier's  wonderful 
work  which  led  to  the  discovery  of  Neptune  as  the  causer  of  per- 
turbations in  planetary  orbits.  Peirce  went  over  the  enormous 
calculations  of  Leverrier  and  pronounced  them  inexact,  and  that 
the  discovery  of  the  planet  was  a  fortunate  accident.  "When 
requested  by  Edward  Everett,  then  President  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  to  suppress  the  announcement  of 
his  results  because  no  words  could  express  the  improbability  of 
his  statements,  he  could  calmly  reply,  'But  it  is  still  more  improb- 
able that  there  can  be  an  error  in  my  calculations,'  and  time 
proved  that  he  was  right." 

The  force  and  judgment  in  a  great  emergency  of  Professor  Peirce 
are  shown  in  this  anecdote  given  me  by  one  who  was  present:  — 

"Jenny  Lind's  last  concert  of  the  original  series,  given  un- 
der the  auspices  of  Phineas  T.  Barnum,  was  given  at  the  hall 
over  the  Fitchburg  Railroad  Station.  Tickets  were  sold  without 
limit,  —  many  more  than  the  hall  could  hold,  —  and  there  was 
every  prospect  of  a  riot.  Barnum  had  taken  the  precaution  to 
leave  for  New  York.  I  got  about  one-third  up  the  main  aisle,  but 
could  get  no  farther.  Just  ahead  of  me  was  Professor  Peirce.  The 
alarm  was  increasing.  The  floor  seemed  to  have  no  support  under- 
neath, but  to  hang  over  the  railroad  track  by  steel  braces  from 


Benjamin  Peirce 


lOI 


the  rafters  above.  Would  it  hold?  The  air  was  stifling  and  windows 
were  broken,  with  much  noisy  crashing  of  glass,  in  order  to  get 
breath.  Women  were  getting  uneasy.  And  there  was  no  possibility 
of  escape  from  a  mass  of  human  beings  so  packed  together.  We 
knew,  from  the  conductor's  baton,  that  the  orchestra  was  playing, 
but  no  musical  sound  reached  us.  Professor  Peirce  mounted  a 
chair.  Perfect  silence  ensued  as  soon  as  he  made  himself  seen.  He 
stated,  very  calmly,  certain  views  at  which  he  had  arrived  after  a 
careful  study  of  the  situation.  The  trouble  was  at  once  allayed. 
Jenny  Lind  recovered  her  voice  and  the  concert  went  on  to  its 
conclusion." 

Peirce's  zeal  and  determination  —  his  intensity  of  feeling  made 
him  on  occasions  even  formidable  —  recall  Shakspeare's  phrase 
about  the  Roman  hero,  — 

"He  struck  Corioli  like  a  planet." 

This  mathematician,  not  content  with  the  equation  of  ellipses 
and  parabolas,  longed  to  see  their  shining  demonstrations  on  the 
background  of  space.  "His  lectures  on  comets,"  said  one  of  his 
friends, "  so  interested  his  Boston  audiences  that  the  Cambridge  Ob- 
servatory soon  rose,  a  witness  to  his  forcible  persuasion,"  as,  years 
later,  when  head  of  the  Coast  Survey,  his  striking  personality,  and 
strong,  convincing  statement,  won  appropriations  from  Congress 
which  raised  that  service  to  its  proper  usefulness  and  eminence. 

Agassiz  came  to  Cambridge  in  1847,  and  was  Peirce's  over- 
the-way  neighbour  In  Quincy  Street.  They  were  good  friends.  It 
has  been  well  said  that  "  Peirce  was  a  transcendentallst  in  mathe- 
matics as  Agassiz  was  In  zoology,  and  a  certain  subtile  tie  of  affin- 
ity connected  these  two  men."  Mr.  Norton  spoke  of  them  as  "po- 
litical men  In  the  University  administration,  who  worked  together 
for  the  advancement  of  the  scientific  Interest,"  up  to  that  time 
almost  ignored,  or  considered  by  some  of  the  rulers  almost  an 
impertinence.    Felton  was  another  valued  friend  and  neighbour. 

Mr.  Emerson  once  wrote:  "To  the  culture  of  the  world  an 
Archimedes,  a  Newton,  is  Indispensable:  so  Nature  guards  them 
by  a  certain  aridity.  If  these  had  been  good  fellows  fond  of 
dancing,  port,  and  clubs,  we  should  have  had  no  Theory  of  the 


I02 


The  Saturday  Club 


sphere,  and  no  PrincipiaJ'^  But  here  was  an  exception.  The  Pro- 
fessor was  a  reader  of  the  best  poetry;  he  delighted  in  the  theatre 
and  in  charades  and  private  theatricals.  The  Quincy  and  Kirk- 
land  Street  neighbours  often  chartered  an  omnibus  in  which  they 
lurched  through  "the  Port"  and  over  the  Boston  cobblestones  to 
see  Warren  at  the  Museum,  or  Booth  at  the  Boston  Theatre,  or 
hear  Fanny  Kemble.  Natura  in  minimis;  he  watched  his  boys'  tops 
and  published  an  analytical  solution  of  their  motion.  He  wrote 
on  the  probabilities  of  the  three-ball  game  in  billiards.  A  tradi- 
tion passed  current  among  graceless  students  that  when  the  Pro- 
fessor sat  down  to  a  game  of  cards  with  one  of  his  sons,  the  actual- 
playing  was  dispensed  with,  for  the  young  man,  after  studying  his 
hand,  made  a  rapid  calculation  on  the  Doctrine  of  Chances,  then- 
would  smile  cheerfully  and  say,  "Hand  over  your  money,  old  man." 
A  pleasant  reminiscence  of  the  family  life  is  given  by  his  daughter, 
another  instance  of  Leasts  and  Mosts  in  this  remarkable  man. 
Before  breakfast  he  always  went  to  walk  with  his  younger  chil- 
dren, now  a  delightful  memory  to  them.  This  man,  who  could 
divine  and  see  remotest  suns  in  space,  amused  his  little  ones  by 
allowing  no  pin  to  hide  from  his  eyes  in  the  dust  of  the  sidewalk; 
—  '*  although  he  never  seemed  to  be  looking  for  them,  he  would 
suddenly  stoop  to  pick  up  a  pin.  He  had  various  *  pincushions'; 
one  was  the  trunk  of  an  elm  tree  near  our  gate,  others  on  Harvard 
and  Brattle  Streets.  Those  on  Quincy  and  Kirkland  Streets  are 
still  standing."  At  home,  his  daughter  says,  "He  was  such  a 
great,  big  ray  of  Light  and  Goodness,  always  so  simple,  cheerful 
and  showing  more  than  amiability,  that  his  great  power  did  not 
seem  to  assert  Itself."  She  recalls  seeing  her  "father  and  Agassiz 
talking  over  some  bad  news  from  the  front  during  the  War  of  the 
Rebellion"  —  Peirce  had  many  valued  friends  on  both  sides  — 
"with  tears  running  down  their  cheeks.  The  awe  of  that  I  re- 
member, but  not  the  bad  news  that  was  the  cause." 

In  the  catalogue  of  the  Harvard  Library  may  be  found  a  card 
thus  inscribed  — 

Ben  Yamen's  SONG  OF  GEOMETRY 

Sung  by  the  Florentine  Academy  at  the  Coronation  of  the  Queen, 
Degraded  into  prose  by  Benjamin  Peirce 


Benjamin  Peine  103 

The  book  thus  catalogued  proves  to  be  Professor  Peirce's  Address 
before  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science 
in  1853.  It  is  bound,  and  inscribed  "To  Cornelius  the  Floren- 
tine." "The  Florentines"  probably  were  an  informal  neighbour- 
hood Club,  "The  Queen"  some  particularly  agreeable  lady,  and 
"Cornelius"  certainly  was  Professor  Cornelius  Conway  Felton. 
However  imaginary  the  "singing"  may  have  been,  any  one  who 
will  read  this  joyous  paean  on  the  perfect  beauty  of  harmonious 
law  running  through  all  that  the  eye  and  mind  of  man  can  con- 
template will  find  it  a  nobler  poem  than  the  vers  lihre  offered  him 
as  such  to-day.  1  Students  who,  with  no  taste  for  mathematics,  yet 
struggled  through  to  analytical  geometry,  might  at  last  find 
beauty  and  illumination  in  the  curve  which  they  plotted  on  paper 
from  a  formidable  equation,  and  later  rejoiced  in  reading  the 
Master's  Ideality  in  the  Physical  Sciences.  Like  Pythagoras, 
Peirce  taught  that  everything  owes  its  existence  and  consistency 
to  the  harmony  which  he  considered  the  basis  of  all  beauty,  and 
found  music  in  the  revolving  spheres.  "  Computation  is  not  bar- 
ren when  it  supplies  subsistence,"  said  Peirce,  "but  the  computa- 
tion of  the  geometer  .  .  .  has  a  loftier  aspiration.  It  provides 
spiritual  nourishment;  hence  it  is  life  itself,  and  is  the  worthy  occu- 
pation of  an  immortal  soul.  The  arithmetical  formula  considered 
as  an  end  is  the  embodiment  of  fact,  and  isolated  fact  is  as  worth- 
less as  the  idle  gossip  of  the  parlour;  .  .  .  whereas  facts  combined 
into  formulae,  and  formulae  organized  into  theory,  penetrate  the 
whole  domain  of  physical  science  and  ascend  to  the  very  throne 
of  ideality." 

Benjamin  Peirce's  breadth  recalls  what  Professor  Kendrick^ 
said,  —  "Plato  having  in  his  twentieth  year  fallen  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Socrates,  he  thenceforth  devoted  himself  to  philoso- 
phy as  that  essence  and  soul  of  harmony  of  which  rhythmical 
numbers  are  but  the  sensuous  and  shadowy  embodiment." 

Mr.  Rantoul  ends  his  brief  printed  sketch  of  the  great  pro- 
fessor with  this  remarkable  statement:  "In  1870,  he  produced  a 

*  Throughout  these  pages  verses  of  our  poets  have  been  introduced  and  I  cannot  resist 
appending  to  this  sketch  of  the  Master  some  portions  of  his  noble,prose  poem.  —  E.  W.  E. 

*  Professor  A.  C.  Kendriclc,  D.D.,  of  Rochester  University. 


I04  The  Saturday  Club 

memoir,  the  manuscript  lithographed  and  but  a  hundred  copies 
made,  so  abstruse  was  the  subject,  —  demonstrating  that,  while 
only  three  algebraic  systems  have,  thus  far,  been  developed  and 
used  in  all  the  triumphant  achievements  of  modern  science,  up- 
wards of  seventy  such  are  possible,  and  this  number  he  fore- 
shadowed and  classified.  One  flash  like  that  lights  up  the  horizon  of 
intellectual  vision,  as  the  lightning  lifts  the  cloud-veil  of  the  mid- 
night's tempest." 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  the  Club  gained  in  quality  by  gathering 
in  Peirce  and  Agassiz.  Bridges  between  this  pair  and  the  poets 
and  writers  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  men  of  law  and  affairs  on  the 
other,  were  soon  found.  To  both  they  brought  shining  new  knowl- 
edge from  sky,  earth,  and  ocean,  and  from  them  received  the  like, 
but  stamped  in  a  different  mint. 

When  the  Club  first  gathered,  their  astronomer  could  tell  them 
the  beautiful  results  of  his  study  for  the  past  three  years.  He 
had  shown  that  old  Saturn  could  not  sustain  his  golden  fluid 
rings,  but  their  weight  was  borne  up  by  his  throng  of  satellites 
in  their  encircling  dance. 

Peirce  did  not  readily  join,  unless  moved,  in  general  conver- 
sation. He  is  said  to  have  been  devoid  of  wit  and  humour.  But 
he  was  an  interesting  talker  to  those  near  him.  On  occasion  he 
could  show  great  Intensity  of  feeling,  yet  he  could  be  genial.  In 
his  later  years  his  hair  and  full  beard  were  of  a  strong  iron-gray. 
His  eyes,  deep-set  under  bushy  brows,  seemed  dark  and  searching. 
He  cared  so  much  for  his  many  friends  in  the  South  that  he  was 
hostile  to  the  anti-slavery  movement  which  was  then  bringing  on 
the  Inevitable  war.  But  after  the  fall  of  Fort  Sumter  he  took  a 
deep  interest  in  the  war.  He  gave  largely  to  the  Sanitary  Commis- 
sion. Peirce  had  been  much  at  Washington,  in  the  ante-bellum 
times,  first,  as  consulting  astronomer  to  the  Coast  Survey,  after- 
wards as  its  chief.  Admiral  Davis,  a  principal  promoter  of  the 
quality  and  improvement  of  this  service,  received  great  help 
from  Peirce.  They  were  close  friends,  and  had  married  sisters. 
The  Nautical  Almanac  and  Ephemeris,  under  their  charge,  sur- 
prised Europe  with  its  excellence.  Note  this  praise  of  Peirce  for 
a  virtue  not  too  common,  —  "He  was  willing  to  be  esteemed  for 


Benjamin  Peine  105 

less  than  he  had  done,  and  could  join  most  heartily  in  the  praise 
of  others  who  perhaps  owed  their  impulse  to  him." 

His  daughter  relates  that  Professor  Peirce  asked  himself,  "What 
is  man?"  Then  answered,  "What  a  strange  union  of  matter  and 
mind!  A  machine  for  converting  material  into  spiritual  force." 
When  he  read  the  denunciations  of  science  by  clergymen,  he  ex- 
claimed: "I  cannot  conceive  a  more  monstrous  absurdity.  How 
can  there  be  a  more  faithless  species  of  infidelity  than  to  believe 
that  the  Deity  has  written  his  word  upon  the  material  universe 
and  a  contradiction  of  it  in  the  Gospel?" 

In  the  year  of  Peirce's  death,  the  orator  at  the  centennial  cele- 
bration of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  spoke  of  him  as  "the  largest 
natural  genius  .  .  .  God  has  given  to  Harvard  in  our  day,  whose 
presence  made  you  the  loftiest  peak  and  farthest  outpost  of  more 
than  mere  scientific  thought;  the  magnet,  with  his  twin,  Agassiz, 
which  made  Harvard  for  forty  years  the  intellectual  Mecca  of 
forty  States."  Robert  Rantoul,  in  his  eulogy,  said:  "It  is  not 
given  to  us  —  it  is  given  to  but  few  men  of  any  generation  —  to 
roam  those  Alpine  solitudes  of  science  to  which  his  genius  reached. 
But  we  may  rejoice  for  him  that,  finding  his  country  among  the 
lowest  of  civilized  nations  in  astronomical  achievement,  he  left 
her  among  the  first,  —  and  that  he  has  been  able  to  do  more  than 
any  American  of  our  day  to  show  how  Nature  may  be  read  by 
the  same  mind  as  a  problem  and  as  a  song." 

E.  W.  E. 

EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  "SONG  OF  BEN  YAMEN" 
{Benjamin  Peirce) 

Geometry,  to  which  I  have  devoted  my  life,  is  honoured  with  the  title 
of  the  Key  of  Sciences;  but  it  is  the  Key  of  an  ever  open  door  which 
refuses  to  be  shut,  and  through  which  the  whole  world  is  crowding,  to 
make  free,  In  unrestrained  license,  with  the  precious  treasures  within, 
thoughtless  both  of  lock  and  key,  of  the  door  itself,  and  even  of  Science, 
to  which  It  owes  such  boundless  possessions,  the  New  World  included. 
The  door  Is  wide  open  and  all  may  enter,  but  all  do  not  enter  with  equal 
thoughtlessness.  There  are  a  few  who  wonder,  as  they  approach,  at  the 
exhaustless  wealth,  as  the  sacred  shepherd  wondered  at  the  burning 
bush  of  Horeb,  which  was  ever  burning  and  never  consumed.   Casting 


io6  'The  Saturday  Club 

their  shoes  from  off  their  feet  and  the  world's  iron-shod  doubts  from  their 
understanding,  these  children  of  the  faithful  take  their  first  step  upon 
the  holy  ground  with  reverential  awe,  and  advance  almost  with  timidity, 
fearful,  as  the  signs  of  Deity  break  upon  them,  lest  they  be  brought  face 
to  face  with  the  Almighty.  .  .  . 

The  Key!  it  is  of  wonderful  construction,  with  its  infinity  of  combina- 
tion, and  its  unlimited  capacity  to  fit  every  lock.  ...  It  closes  the  mas- 
sive arches  which  guard  the  vaults  whence  the  mechanic  arts  supply  the 
warehouses  of  commerce,  and  it  opens  the  minute  cabinet  in  which  the 
Queen  of  the  Fairies  protects  her  microscopic  jewels;  it  is  the  great 
master-key  which  unlocks  every  door  of  knowledge  and  without  which 
no  discovery  which  deserves  the  name  —  which  is  law,  and  not  isolated 
fact  —  has  been  or  ever  can  be  made.  Fascinated  by  its  symmetry  the 
geometer  may  at  times  have  been  too  exclusively  engrossed  with  his 
science,  forgetful  of  its  applications;  he  may  have  exalted  it  into  his  idol 
and  worshipped  it;  he  may  have  degraded  it  into  his  toy  .  .  .  when  he 
should  have  been  hard  at  work  with  it,  using  it  for  the  benefit  of  man- 
kind and  the  glory  of  his  Creator.  .  .  .  But  ascend  with  me  above  the 
dust,  above  the  cloud,  to  the  realms  of  the  higher  geometry,  where  the 
heavens  are  never  clouded;  where  there  is  no  impure  vapour,  and  no  de- 
lusive or  imperfect  observation,  where  the  new  truths  are  already  arisen, 
while  they  are  yet  dimly  dawning  on  the  world  below;  where  the  earth 
is  a  little  planet;  where  the  sun  has  dwindled  to  a  star;  where  all  the  stars 
are  lost  in  the  Milky  Way  to  which  they  belong;  where  the  Milky  Way 
is  seen  floating  through  space  like  any  other  nebula;  where  the  whole 
great  girdle  of  nebulae  has  diminished  to  an  atom  and  has  become  as 
readily  and  completely  submissive  to  the  pen  of  the  geometer,  and  the 
slave  of  his  formula,  as  the  single  drop,  which  falls  from  the  clouds,  in- 
stinct with  all  the  forces  of  the  material  world.  Try  with  me  the  pre- 
cision of  measure  with  which  the  Universe  has  been  meted  out;  observe 
how  exactly  all  the  parts  are  fitted  to  the  whole  and  to  each  other,  and 
then  declare  who  was  present  in  the  council-chamber  when  the  Lord  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  Earth. 

Begin  with  the  heavens  themselves;  see  how  precisely  the  motions  of 
the  firmament  have  endured  through  the  friction  of  the  ages;  observe 
the  exactness  of  the  revolutions  of  the  stars;  if  these  mighty  orbs  cannot 
resist  the  law,  what  can  the  atom  do?  ...  A  slight  defect  of  motion  is  just 
detected;  it  is  slight,  very  slight,  but  it  is  unquestionable.  We  dare  not 
hide  it  out  of  sight.  Science  must  admit  this  triumph  of  art  and  be  true, 
even  if  the  stars  are  false.  The  names  of  "fixed  star"  and  "pole  star" 
must  not  be  suffered  to  impose  upon  the  trusting  world.  .  .  .  Geometry! 
To  the  rescue!    Geometry  is  at  her  post,  faithful  among  the  faithless. 


Benjamin  Peine  107 

The  pen  is  at  work,  the  midnight  oil  consumed,  the  magic  circles  drawn 
by  the  wise  men  of  the  East,  and  the  wizard  logarithm  summoned  from 
the  North.  .  .  .  The  defect  of  motion  is  transformed  into  the  discovery  of 
a  new  law.  It  becomes  the  proof  of  the  [j-fc]  atmosphere  to  bend  the  ray 
from  its  course  as  it  shoots  down,  laden  with  the  image  of  Arcturus  and  the 
sweet  influence  of  the  Pleiades.  It  becomes  the  proof  of  the  moving  light, 
of  the  unseen  planet,  and  of  the  invisible  stars  and  hence  a  new  proof  of 
the  precision  of  the  measure.  Honour  to  Bradley,  to  Bessel,  to  Adams, 
and  to  Leverrier!  The  stars  are  not  false  —  question  them  as  you  may, 
they  give  the  same  evidence,  and  do  not  contradict  each  other's  testi- 
mony. They  tell  us  that  ours  is  not  the  central  sun,  and  that  we  are  mov- 
ing in  the  procession  of  the  stars;  they  tell  us  that  we  move  among  the 
others  toward  the  constellation  of  Hercules  so  that,  while  we  grow  in  wis- 
dom, we  approach  the  strong  man's  house.  They  tell  us  that  we  are  mov- 
ing at  such  a  rate  that  the  distance  from  star  to  star  is  but  just  a  good 
geological  day's  journey;  and  hereby  they  confirm  the  story  which  is 
written  upon  the  crust  of  the  globe  and  prove  that  the  earth  and  skies 
have  been  measured  out  with  the  same  unit  of  measure. 

Descend  from  the  infinite  to  the  infinitesimal.  Long  before  .  .  . 
observation  had  begun  to  penetrate  the  veil  under  which  Nature  has 
hidden  her  mysteries,  the  restless  mind  sought  some  principle  of  power 
strong  enough  and  of  sufficient  variety  to  collect  and  bind  together  all 
parts  of  a  world.  This  seemed  to  be  found,  where  one  might  least  expect 
it,  in  abstract  numbers.  Everywhere  the  exactest  numerical  proportion 
was  seen  to  constitute  the  spiritual  element  of  the  highest  beauty.  It  was 
the  harmony  of  music,  and  the  music  of  song;  the  fastidious  eye  of  the 
Athenian  required  the  delicately  curved  outlines  of  the  temple  in  which  he 
worshipped  his  goddess  to  conform  to  the  exact  law  of  the  hyperbola, 
and  he  traced  his  graceful  features  of  her  statue  from  the  repulsive 
wrinkles  of  Arithmetic.  Throughout  nature  the  omnipresent  beautiful 
revealed  an  all-pervading  language  spoken  to  the  human  mind,  and  to 
man's  highest  capacity  of  comprehension.  By  whom  was  it  spoken? 
Whether  by  the  gods  of  the  ocean,  or  the  land,  by  the  ruling  divinities 
of  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  or  by  the  dryads  of  the  forest  and  the 
nymphs  of  the  fountain,  it  was  one  speech  and  its  written  cipher  was 
cabalistic.  The  cabala  were  those  of  number,  and  even  if  they  transcended 
the  gemetric  ^  skill  of  the  Rabbi  and  the  hieroglyphical  learning  of  the 
priest  of  Osiris,  they  were,  distinctly  and  unmistakably,  expressions  of 
thought  uttered  to  mind  by  mind;  they  were  the  solutions  of  mathe- 
matical problems  of  extraordinary  complexity. 

*  Gemetria,  a  cabalistic  system  consisting  in  the  substitution  for  a  word  of  any  other 
the  numerical  values  of  whose  letters  give  the  same  sum.  (Century  Dictionary.) 


I  o  8  l^he  Saturday  Club 


The  bee  of  Hymettus  solved  its  great  problem  of  isoperimetry  on  the 
morning  of  creation.  ...  The  very  spirits  of  the  winds,  when  they  were 
sent  to  carry  the  grateful  harvest  to  the  thirstmg  fields  of  Calabria^  did 
not  forget  the  geometry  which  they  had  studied  in  the  caverns  of  .Eolus 
and  of  which  the  geologist  is  daily  discovering  the  diagrams. 


SAMUEL  GRAY  WARD 

It  has  been  shown  in  the  initial  chapter  of  this  chronicle  how  his 
much-valued  younger  friend,  Ward,  made  Emerson's  long  cher- 
ished hope  of  a  club  attractive  and  practicable.  Ward's  tactful 
suggestions  of  including  in  the,  at  first,  small  membership  some 
brilliant  persons  in  whom  the  social  gift  prevailed  over  the  specu- 
lative or  reforming,  and  of  the  importance  of  a  dinner,  put  the 
project  into  a  form  which  the  accident  of  Woodman's  informal 
lunches  at  once  made  a  fact. 

Ward  was  a  man  of  good  birth  and  breeding,  with  artistic 
tastes  and  gifts,  and  practical  business  talent;  these  struggled 
in  him  for  the  mastery.  His  father,  Thomas  Wren  Ward,  was  a 
merchant  in  Boston  with  his  home  in  Park  Street,  where  Samuel 
was  born  in  1 8 17.  At  Round  Hill  School,  where  he  went  later 
than  John  Forbes  and  Tom  Appleton,  but  probably  when  Ben- 
jamin Peirce  was  the  mathematical  teacher  there,  he  had  the 
great  good  fortune,  for  a  boy,  of  having  classical  studies  well  pre- 
sented, so  that  he  could  then,  and  more  in  after  years,  find  joy 
in  them.  In  his  old  age  he  wrote,  "One  cannot  have  mastered 
the  Latin  Grammar  at  any  early  age  without  a  speaking  ac- 
quaintance, at  least,  with  Virgil  and  Horace  and  Cicero,  a  single 
line  of  one  of  whom  makes  all  educated  men  kin  and  establishes 
a  free-masonry  like  no  other." 

While  he  was  at  Harvard  he  lived  in  the  house  of  Professor  and 
Mrs.  Farrar,  a  centre  of  culture  and  refinement.  Two  fortunate 
chances  befell  him.  There  he  met  Margaret  Fuller;  the  eager  young 
girl  of  astonishing  scholarship  and  intellectual  power,  not  attrac- 
tive, and  an  invalid,  became  his  friend.  He  said  he  owed  to  her 
a  great  debt  for  introduction  to  the  new  world  of  literature  and 
thought,  and  an  intellectual  impulse  that  was  of  great  value  to 
him,  Mr.  Ward's  other  and  greater  good  fortune  in  the  Farrar 
home  was  the  meeting  there  a  young  visitor.  Miss  Anna  Barker. 
A  few  years  later  she  became  his  wife,  and,  though  she  became  an 
invalid,  her  always  beautiful  presence  was  spared  to  him  until  they 
were  both  very  old. 


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After  graduating,  young  Ward  went  abroad  for  more  than  a 
year.  He  had  the  luck  to  travel  first  with  the  Farrars,  then  to  go 
to  Italy  with  Mr.  George  Ticknor  in  his  carriage;  also  to  study 
the  best  art  and  the  noble  landmarks  of  the  past,  with  natural 
aesthetic  sense  and  eager  zeal. 

On  his  return  he  began  life  as  a  broker,  but  the  financial  de- 
pression of  1837,  continuing  long,  gave  him  a  reason  for  leaving 
State  Street  to  try  his  fortune  and  strengthen  his  constitution  by 
farming.  He  had  a  passion  for  gardening  and  manfully  ploughed 
and  planted  in  the  beautiful  surroundings  of  Lenox,  then  a  simple 
and  remote  village.  He  had  married  Anna  Barker  before  the  move 
to  Berkshire.  They  loved  the  country,  but  for  both  of  them  it  was 
struggling  against  manifest  destiny  to  live  a  rustic  life,  far  hid- 
den away  from  cultivated  society.  They  were  born  to  live  in  it 
and  adorn  it. 

In  a  letter,  written  by  Mr.  Norton  to  his  old  friend  in  the  last 
years  of  their  lives,  is  this  pleasant  recollection:  "As,  the  other 
day,  I  was  passing  the  Farrar  house  [on  Cambridge  Common] 
with  which  you  were  once  so  familiar,  I  recalled  that  the  first  time 
I  ever  saw  you  was  one  Sunday  morning  as  I  was  going  to  church 
with  my  mother.  As  we  passed  the  gate  she  said  to  me,  'There 
is  young  Mr.  Ward  going  up  the  steps,  to  see  the  beautiful  Miss 
Anna  Barker.'  I  suppose  the  little  incident  impressed  itself  on 
my  memory,  because  the  beautiful  Miss  Barker  had  been  at  our 
house  and  had  made  me,  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve,  captive  by  her 
charms."  No  wonder,  for  young  or  old  who  had  the  privilege  of 
meeting  Mrs.  Ward  during  the  next  sixty  years  felt,  in  varying 
degrees,  the  spell  of  her  beauty  which,  being  intrinsic,  shone  out 
undimmed  by  long  years  of  invalidism.  Instead  of  becoming 
thereby  self-absorbed,  she  kept  until  the  end  the  rare  power  of 
lending  herself  with  sure,  winning  sympathy  to  those  whom  she 
received  by  her  bedside.  The  untutored  and  shy  young  people 
found  their  tongues.  They  left  her  room  astonished,  happier  and 
higher  than  when  they  went. 

The  natural,  masterful  brusqueness  and  rather  exacting  social 
standards  of  her  husband  were  surely  sweetened  by  her.  He  had 
a  way  of  correcting  crude  behaviour  or  obvious  remarks  by  young 


Samuel  Gray  W^ard 


III 


people  which  left  a  sting,  but  the  next  time  they  met  him  his 
affectionate  smile  could  make  them  forget  anything. 

In  spite  of  the  beauty  of  Lenox,  the  young  pair,  nurtured  in  so- 
ciety and  craving  art  and  letters,  must  have  felt  the  barrenness  of 
a  remote  country  village  in  the  long  winters.  His  wife  said,  in 
their  middle  life,  "When  I  first  saw  Sam  Ward  (he  was  perhaps 
twenty-one)  he  was  a  prematurely  old  man,  but  he  grew  young, 
and  has  been  growing  younger  ever  since."  Mr.  Ward  left  Lenox, 
he  said,  "because  he  found  a  hole  in  his  pocket  that  could  be 
mended  in  no  other  way,"  but  the  real  reason  was  that  his  father 
needed  him. 

The  son,  in  his  last  year,  wrote  for  his  grandchildren  an  account 
of  his  life.  The  part  telling  of  his  business,  and  how  he  was  drawn 
into  it,  to  his  surprise  and  even  dismay,  gives  an  interesting  nar- 
rative which  may  be  stated  very  briefly  as  follows.  Bills  on  Lon- 
don commanded  cash  all  over  the  world.  The  Barings  were  the 
most  important  of  the  firms  who  supplied  these,  and  their  credit 
in  all  foreign  parts  was  a  proverb.  Joshua  Bates  was  brought  up 
in  a  Boston  counting-room,  was  a  member  of  the  firm,  and  he  ar- 
ranged that  Mr.  Thomas  Wren  Ward,  as  their  agent  in  America, 
should  supply  credit  by  bills  on  London  to  American  merchants. 
The  basis  of  this  convenience  was  personal  confidence.  The  Bar- 
ings required  that  merchants  taking  credit  from  them  should  take 
none  from  other  bankers.  They  never  opened  accounts  where  it 
was  thought  necessary  to  take  security. 

The  venture  proved  a  great  success  under  the  older  Ward,  but 
in  1850,  when  he  had  held  the  agency  for  twenty-two  years,  he 
felt  he  had  a  right  to  retire.  A  suitable  successor  was  thought  of, 
but  something  prevented.  As  Samuel  Ward  was  working  in  his 
Lenox  garden,  he  saw,  like  an  apparition  approaching,  his  father's 
factotum,  and  on  the  moment  foresaw  his  own  doom.  Some  one 
asked  Mr.  Bates  how  he  could  confide  such  large  affairs  to  this 
untried  young  man.  He  simply  said,  "  I  know  the  stock,  and  am 
sure  it  will  be  all  right."  The  father  and  son  had  been  in  close 
confidence. 

Samuel  Ward's  instincts  were  literary  and  artistic,  and  he  loved 
the  country.    Yet  the  Lenox  experiment  had  shown  the  disad- 


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vantages  of  remoteness.  As  a  matter  of  duty  and  affection  he 
yielded  to  his  father's  wish  for  him  and  straightway  showed  him- 
self a  sound  and  capable  business  man.  The  firm's  great  credit 
business  doubled  and  tripled  during  the  twenty  years  after  he 
succeeded  to  the  management. 

Yet  one  must  believe  that  in  those  years,  when  confined  and 
tired,  the  mood  returned  often  which  inspired  his  poem,  written 
anonymously,  in  the  Dial  in  the  days  of  his  short  business  trial 
before  the  Lenox  venture. 

THE  SHIELD  i 

The  old  man  said,  "Take  thou  this  shield,  my  son, 
Long  tried  in  battle,  and  long  tried  by  age, 
Guarded  by  this,  thy  fathers  did  engage, 
Trusting  to  this,  the  victory  they  have  won." 

Forth  from  the  tower  Hope  and  Desire  had  built, 
In  youth's  bright  morn  I  gazed  upon  the  plain,  — 
There  struggled  countless  hosts,  while  many  a  stain 
Marked  where  the  blood  of  brave  men  had  been  spilt. 

With  spirit  strong  I  buckled  to  the  fight,  — 
What  sudden  chill  rushes  through  every  vein? 
Those  fatal  arms  oppress  me  —  all  in  vain 
My  fainting  limbs  seek  their  accustomed  might. 

Forged  were  those  arms  for  men  of  other  mould; 
Our  hands  they  fetter,  cramp  our  spirits  free; 
I  throw  them  on  the  ground,  and  suddenly 
Comes  back  my  strength,  returns  my  spirit  bold. 

I  stand  alone,  unarmed,  yet  not  alone; 
Who  heeds  no  law  but  what  within  he  finds; 
Trusts  his  own  vision,  not  to  other  minds; 
He  fights  with  thee.  Father,  aid  thou  thy  son. 

And  yet  Ward,  in  turn,  placed  a  Pegasus  "in  pound"  In  the 
next  generation.  After  all,  his  unsuspected  business  talent  and 
success  had  been  a  source  of  some  gratification  to  him. 

Mr.  Ward  made  several  contributions  in  prose  or  verse  for  the 
Dial^  and  the  following  passage  from  a  letter  written  to  him  by 
1  Published  JQ  the  Dial  about  1843. 


Samuel  Gray  Ward  113 

Emerson  In  1843  shows  that  he  had  promised  to  write  for  the  next 
number  a  paper  (on  poetry?)  In  dialogue  form:  "Your  letter  and 
the  fine  colloquy  make  me  happy  and  proud.  I  shall  print  it,  to 
be  sure,  every  syllable,  and  the  good  reader  shall  thank  you,  or 
not,  as  God  gives  him  Illumination."  A  few  years  after  their  first 
acquaintance,  In  July,  1840,  Emerson  wrote:  "The  reason  why  I 
am  curious  about  you  Is  that  with  tastes  which  I  also  have,  you 
have  tastes  and  powers  and  corresponding  circumstances  which 
I  have  not  and  perhaps  cannot  divine,  but  certainly  we  will  not 
quarrel  with  our  companion,  for  he  has  more  root,  subterranean 
or  aerial,  sent  out  Into  the  great  Universe  to  draw  his  nourishment 
withal.  The  secret  of  virtue  is  to  know  that,  the  richer  another 
is,  the  richer  am  I;  —  how  much  more  if  that  other  Is  my  friend." 
For  Ward  was  one  of  Emerson's  brightest  "  Sons  of  the  morning," 
and  though  far  from  setting  in  eclipse,  like  many  of  these,  and  by 
Emerson  always  loved  and  valued,  yet  the  morning  ideal  was 
perhaps  a  little  dimmed  by  life's  experiences.  I  remember  that 
he  said  In  his  mature  life,  "Show  me  a  radical  over  forty,  and  I 
will  show  you  an  unsound  man." 

Mr.  Ward  was  a  man  remarkable  for  his  many-sidedness,  an 
able  man  of  affairs,  public-spirited  citizen,  possessed  of  talent, 
social  position  and  aplomb,  accomplished,  masterful,  an  Intelli- 
gent and  hospitable  householder,  a  good  but  sparing  writer,  wide 
and  critical  reader  in  various  languages,  well  versed  In  art  and 
an  admirable  amateur  draughtsman.  The  elder  Ward  was 
Treasurer  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  then  the  small  oasis  In  which 
Art  was  struggling  to  light  In  Massachusetts,  and  the  son,  who 
had.  In  his  eighteen  months  In  Europe,  fed  his  eyes  and  soul  In 
the  galleries,  with  inborn  taste  thus  Instructed,  brought  home 
in  his  portfolios  the  best  prints  and  drawings  then  attainable. 

As  Ward  was  stirred  by  the  courage  and  elevation  of  thought 
of  his  older  friend;  Emerson  In  his  quiet  country  life  was  very 
sensible  of  the  charm  of  the  social  culture  and  manners  of  Ward 
and  his  wife,  and  was  glad  to  avail  himself  of  his  knowledge  of  art 
and  discernment  in  collecting.  There  was  always  a  certain  spell 
felt  by  the  quiet  scholar  when  such  people  were  In  company  with 
him  and  afterward,  yet  his  ancestry  and  his  solitary  genius  showed 


114  The  Saturday  Club 

him  that  his  path  was  not  theirs.  His  poem  "The  Park"  records 

this  feeling :  — 

"The  prosperous  and  beautiful 
To  me  seem  not  to  wear 
The  yoke  of  conscience  masterful 
Which  galls  me  everywhere,"  etc. 

Ward  sent  his  portfoHos  to  Concord  for  Emerson  to  enjoy,  telling 
him  to  keep  a  delicate  copy  in  some  reddish  medium  of  the  relief 
of  Endymion  in  the  Capitoline  Museum.  It  was  thus  acknowl- 
edged :  — 

"I  confess  I  have  difficulty  in  accepting  the  superb  drawing 
which  you  ask  me  to  keep.  In  taking  it  from  the  portfolio  I  take 
it  from  its  godlike  companions  to  put  it  where  it  must  shine  alone. 
...  I  have  been  glad  to  learn  to  know  you  through  your  mute 
friends  [the  drawings].  They  tell  me  very  eloquently  what  you 
love.  .  .  .  This  beautiful  Endymion  deserves  to  be  looked  on  by 
instructed  eyes.^ ... 

"  I  conceive  of  you  as  allied  on  every  side  to  what  is  beautiful  and 
inspiring,  with  noblest  purposes  in  life  and  with  powers  to  execute 
your  thought.  What  space  can  be  allowed  you  for  a  moment's 
despondency.'*  ...  In  this  country  we  need  whatever  is  generous 
and  beautiful  in  character,  more  than  ever,  because  of  the  general 
mediocrity  of  thought  produced  by  the  arts  of  gain.  .  .  .  Friends, 
it  is  a  part  of  my  creed,  we  always  find;  the  Spirit  provides  for 
itself.   If  they  come  late,  they  are  of  a  higher  class." 

In  1847  Mr.  Emerson  notes  of  his  friend  in  his  journal:  "Ward 
has  aristocratical  position  and  turns  it  to  excellent  account;  the 
only  aristocrat  who  does.  ...  I  find  myself  interested  that  he 
should  play  his  part  of  the  American  gentleman  well,  but  am  con- 
tented that  he  should  do  that  instead  of  me,  —  do  the  etiquette 
instead  of  me,  —  as  I  am  contented^  that  others  should  sail  the 
ships  and  work  the  spindles." 

Ward  with  his  family  lived  in  Louisburg  Square  for  many 
years,  and  had  a  pleasant  summer  home  in  Canton,  once  the  home 
of  the  great  mathematician  Bowditch,  where  still  stood  his  tower 
with  a  travelling  observation-dome.     On  the  death  of  Thomas 

*  The  Endymion  hung  in  Emerson's  parlor  all  through  his  lifetime  and  still  hangs  there. 


Samuel  Gray  JVard  115 

Wren  Ward  in  1858,  his  son  became  the  sole  representative  of  the 
Barings  in  this  country  until,  nine  years  later,  his  brother,  George 
Cabot  Ward,  wag  associated  with  him.  Just  before  this  occurred, 
the  task  fell  on  Mr.  Sam  Ward  of  effecting  the  purchase  of  Alaska 
from  Russia  for  the  United  States;  the  price  paid  being  seven  and 
one  half  million  dollars.  About  this  time  the  firm  moved  to  New 
York.  Early  in  the  war  of  secession  Mr.  Sam  Ward,  in  company 
with  other  patriotic  supporters  of  the  cause  of  Union  and  Free- 
dom, felt  the  need  of,  and  founded,  the  Union  Club  there;  also  with 
good  Bostonians,  many  of  them  members  of  the  Saturday  Club, 
established  the  Union  Club  here.  More  than  that,  he  took  a  prin- 
cipal part  in  superintending  the  alterations  of  the  Lawrence  and 
Lowell  houses  on  Park  Street  from  the  combination  of  which  the 
Union  Clubhouse  was  formed.  The  Saturday  Club  has,  now  for 
many  years,  dined  there.  Later,  Mr.  Ward  took  an  active  interest 
in  establishing  the  Nation  newspaper,  whose  high  and  independ- 
ent tone  had  a  great  influence  in  enlightening  the  people  and 
spreading  and  sustaining  a  patriotism  pure  of  mere  partisanship. 
Many  persons  have  confounded  our  Samuel  Gray  Ward,  because 
of  his  later  living  at  Newport,  with  Mr.  Samuel  Ward,  a  resident 
there,  brother  of  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  but  with  quite  other  sym- 
pathies and  attitude  in  the  war,  as  his  sister  in  her  noble  poem 
"The  Flag"  scrupled  not  to  show. 

When  the  Back  Bay  began  to  be  reclaimed  and  the  Public 
Garden  emerged  from  the  muddy  water,  Mr.  Ward  was  one  of 
the  pioneer  residents.  He  built  a  stately  house.  Number  One 
Commonwealth  Avenue,  next  to  that  of  Mr.  Joshua  Bates  on 
Arlington  Street,  and,  not  long  after,  a  beautiful  summer  house 
on  the  cliffs  at  Newport  weaned  his  family  from  the  Canton  home. 

Mr.  Ward's  love  for  the  best  French  literature  and  habitual 
entertainment  at  his  home  of  guests  and  correspondents  from  the 
Continent,  perhaps  was  a  cause  of  his  rather  epigrammatic  little 
utterances  over  which  he  often  chuckled.  He  liked  to  let  the  guest 
talk,  and  then,  instead  of  sustained  comment  or  argument,  would 
interject  a  shrewd  or  witty  sentence.  He  would  have  made  a  good 
diplomatist.  He  was  very  fond  of  a  work  by  Brillat  de  Savarin, 
La  Physiologie  du  Gout,  to  which  he  introduced  Emerson.    The 


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latter,  a  propos  of  this,  noted  in  his  journal;  "Longfellow  avoids 
greedy  smokers.  A  cigar  lasts  one  hour;  but  is  not  allowed  to 
lose  fire.  'Give  me  the  luxuries,  the  necessities  may  take  their 
chance';  and  the  appendix  to  this,  is  Sam  Ward's  rule,  that  the 
last  thing  an  invalid  is  to  give  up,  is,  the  going  out  to  places  of 
amusement,  —  the  theatre,  balls,  concerts,  etc.  And  Sir  George 
Cornwall  Lewis's  saying,  that '  Life  would  be  tolerable,  if  it  were 
not  for  the  pleasures.'  Ward  said,  and  admitted,  the  best  things. 
He  had  found  out,  he  said,  why  people  die;  it  is  to  break  up  their 
style." 

In  1870  Mr.  Ward  withdrew  from  active  business,  went  abroad 
with  his  family  and  lived  there,  mainly  in  Rome,  for  nearly  three 
years,  but  yielded,  on  his  return,  to  the  urgency  of  the  Barings 
that  he  should  again  superintend  their  affairs  here.  He  built  a 
house  in  Lenox.  After  his  final  withdrawal  from  business,  he  made 
his  home  in  Washington,  coming  northward  in  the  summers.  Of 
course  he  came  seldom  to  the  Club,  for  he  had  outlived  all  but  one 
or  two  of  his  early  friends. 

Emerson,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Ward  acknowledging  her  gift  of 
her  husband's  photograph,  says:  "In  this  picture  he  who  knows 
how  to  give  to  every  day  its  dues,  wears  a  seriousness  more  be- 
coming than  any  lights  which  wit  or  gaiety  might  lend  to  other 
hours." 

Mr.  Norton's  daughter  speaks  of  the  "fortunate  circumstance 
of  a  late  ripening  friendship,  chiefly  expressed  through  correspond- 
ence, with  Mr.  Ward  in  Washington.  The  intercourse  between 
them  was  like  that  of  two  seafarers  who  had  sailed  in  youth  from 
the  same  port,  and,  meeting  near  the  end  of  life,  sat  down  to 
bridge  the  intervening  years  and  weigh  the  new  against  the  old." 

Mr.  Ward  grew  feeble,  but  his  faculties  seemed  hardly  im- 
paired during  his  seven  years  of  life  in  a  new  century.  He  died  in 
November,  1907,  having  been  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club 
which  he  had  helped  into  existence,  for  fifty  years. 

E.  W.  E. 


EDWIN  PERCY  WHIPPLE 

American  readers  who  are  familiar  with  the  life  of  Walter  Bage- 
hot,  the  English  Essayist,  will  be  struck  by  a  curious  parallelism 
between  his  literary  career  and  that  of  Edwin  Percy  Whipple. 
Neither  of  these  forceful  essayists  enjoyed  an  academic  educa- 
tion. Both  were  forced  by  circumstances  into  the  business  of 
banking.  Each  was  a  passionate  reader,  with  a  gift  of  communi- 
cating enthusiasm  for  books,  and  each  carried  into  his  judgment 
of  literature  the  shrewd,  practical  sense  of  a  man  of  affairs.  Both 
wrote  about  books  and  authors  in  the  familiar  tone  of  spirited 
conversation,  avoiding,  as  one  instinctively  avoids  in  casual  talk 
with  a  chance  companion  upon  a  railway  journey,  anything  like 
preciosity  or  subtlety.  Healthy,  natural,  vivid  human  intercourse 
gives  the  key  of  the  style  of  both  essayists.  The  following  brief 
passage  from  Whipple  dealing  with  the  credulity  of  men  of  busi- 
ness as  compared  with  the  credulity  of  men  of  letters,  is  precisely 
in  Bagehot's  vein:  — 

"When  I  first  had  the  happiness  to  make  his  [Emerson's]  ac- 
quaintance I  was  a  clerk  in  a  banking-house.  .  .  .  The  first  thing 
that  struck  me  was  the  quaint,  keen,  homely  good-sense  which 
was  one  of  the  marked  characteristics  of  the  volume;  and  I  con- 
trasted the  coolness  of  this  transcendentalist,  whenever  he  dis- 
cussed matters  relating  to  the  conduct  of  life,  with  the  fury  of 
delusion  under  which  merchants  of  established  reputation  seemed 
sometimes  to  be  labouring  in  their  mad  attempts  to  resist  the 
operation  of  the  natural  laws  of  trade.  They,  I  thought,  were 
the  transcendentalists,  the  subjective  poets,  the  Rousseaus  and 
Byrons  of  business,  who  in  their  greed  were  fiercely  '  accommo- 
dating the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind,'  without 
any  practical  insight  of  principles  or  foresight  of  consequences. 
Nothing  more  amazed  me,  when  I  was  a  clerk,  recording  trans- 
actions in  which  I  incurred  no  personal  responsibility,  than  the 
fanaticism  of  capitalists  in  venturing  their  money  in  wild  specu- 
lations. The  willingness  to  buy  waste  and  worthless  eastern  lands; 


1 1 8  The  Saturday  Club 


the  madness  of  the  men  who  sunk  their  millions  in  certain  rail- 
roads; and  the  manias  which  occasionally  seize  upon  and  passion- 
ately possess  business  men,  surpassing  in  folly  those  fine  frenzies 
of  the  imagination  which  are  considered  to  lead  to  absurdities 
belonging  to  poets  alone,  —  all  these  facts  early  impressed  me  with 
the  conviction  that  a  transcendentalist  of  the  type  of  Emerson 
was  as  good  a  judge  of  investments  on  earth  as  he  was  of  invest- 
ments in  the  heavens  above  the  earth." 

Whipple  was  seven  years  older  than  Bagehot.    He  was  born  in 
Gloucester  in  1819,  the  birth-year  of  Lowell  and  Story  among  the 
Saturday  Club  group,  and  of  many  other  persons  of  literary  dis- 
tinction, such  as  George  Eliot,  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Walt  Whitman, 
and  Charles  A.  Dana.    At  fifteen  he  became  a  clerk  in  a  Salem 
bank,  and  at  eighteen  he  began  to  serve  a  Boston  banking-house 
in  the  same  capacity.   He  was  already  an  omnivorous  reader.   At 
twenty-two  he  wrote  a  review  of  the  First  Series  of  Emerson's 
essays,  in  which  he  called  Emerson,  for  the  first  time,  "our  Greek- 
Yankee,"  a  phrase  which  has  been  borrowed  by  countless  critics. 
He  won  a  general  reputation  by  a  brilliant  article  on  Macaulay  in 
the  North  American  Review  in  1843,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four.    It 
was  like  Macaulay's  own  triumph  with  his  essay  on  Milton,  and  the 
young  American  bank-clerk  had  already  learned  the  trick  of  the 
Scotchman's  clear,  ringing,  sure, — and  alas,  sometimes,  cock-sure, 
—  style.    When  the  Merchants'  Exchange  of  Boston  established 
its  reading-room  and  library,  Whipple  became  its  superintendent. 
Harvard  gave  him  the  honorary  degree  of  M.A.  in  1848,  and  the 
University  of  Vermont  in  1851.  His  Lowell  Institute  lectures  in 
1859  on  the  Literature  oj  the  Age  of  Elizabeth  became  a  widely  read 
and  most  useful  book.   When  the  Saturday  Club  was  organized, 
there  was  no  question  as  to  his  standing  as  a  representative  man 
of  letters,  and  his  genial  personal  qualities,  then  and  always,  made 
him  a  welcome  guest  in  every  literary  circle.  His  survey  of  Ameri- 
can Literature  J  written  for  the  Centennial  year  of  1876,  shows  him 
at  the  maturity  of  his  powers.   It  was  a  propos  of  this  book  that  his 
friend  Whittier  characterized  him  as,  "with  the  possible  exception 
of  Lowell  and  Matthew  Arnold,  the  ablest  critical  essayist  of  our 
time."    During  the  next  ten  years,  however,  the  decay  of  the  old 


Edwin  Percy  Whipple  119 

Lyceum  system,  his  increasing  ill-health,  and  the  growing  popu- 
larity of  other  authors  whose  fame  he  himself  had  helped  to  es- 
tablish, withdrew  Whipple  more  and  more  from  notice,  and 
when  he  died  in  his  modest  home  in  Boston  in  1886,  his  name  had 
less  significance  with  the  public  than  it  had  enjoyed  thirty  years 
before. 

There  are  reasons,  no  doubt,  for  his  decline  in  popularity  as  a 
critical  essayist.  Poe,  whose  brief  critical  essays  were  practically 
disregarded  by  Whipple  and  his  friends,  has  steadily  gained  rec- 
ognition in  this  field,  as  in  others.  Arnold  certainly  holds  his 
own.  Lowell's  critical  methods  have  had  to  sustain  severe  attack, 
but  when  certain  qualifications  have  been  made,  his  place  in  the 
foremost  rank  of  American  critics  is  not  seriously  questioned.  Why 
has  Whipple,  whose  critical  work  delighted  and  instructed  a  whole 
generation  of  his  countrymen,  been  demoted?  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted, of  course,  that  he  lacked  Poe's  originality  of  perception, 
as  he  lacked  Arnold's  sound  classical  training,  and  Lowell's  sheer 
cleverness,  but  a  more  obvious  obstacle  to  the  permanency  of  his 
influence  is  perhaps  to  be  found  in  that  oral  method  which  was 
imposed  upon  him  by  the  Lyceum  system  to  which  he  largely 
owed  his  audience  and  his  influence.  His  thought  and  his  style 
were  subdued  to  what  they  worked  in,  namely,  the  physical  pres- 
ence of  auditors  who  wished  to  be  instructed  as  to  facts,  guided 
in  ethical  judgments,  and  duly  amused,  all  within  the  hour.  In 
the  preface  to  one  of  his  volumes  of  addresses,  Whipple  touches 
gracefully  and  not  without  pathos  upon  the  difficulty  of  his  task. 
"The  style,"  he  confesses,  "doubtless  exhibits  that  perpetual 
scepticism  as  to  the  patience  of  audiences  which  torments  the  lec- 
turer during  the  brief  hour  in  which  he  attempts  to  hold  their  at- 
tention." Whipple  fulfilled  his  contract  faithfully  and  admirably, 
but  he  could  not  perform  Emerson's  miracle  of  transmuting  the 
oral  material  and  method  into  the  stuff  of  permanent  literature. 
He  lectured  excellently,  for  instance,  on  Elizabethan  literature, 
in  which  he  was  thoroughly  read,  but  to  compare  these  lectures 
with  the  lectures  of  Hazlitt  or  the  essays  of  Lamb  upon  the  same 
authors,  is  to  perceive  Whipple's  inescapable  Lyceum  quality. 
His  books  remain,  at  least  for  the  greater  part,  lectures  that  once 


I20 


The  Saturday  Club 


served  their  day,  the  highly  intelligent  and  capable  service  of  a 
middleman,  distributing  to  the  general  public  the  produce  of  other 
minds.  That  this  Interpretative  criticism  has  its  value,  no  one 
doubts,  but  the  technical  requirements  of  the  speaker's  platform 
limit  its  suggestiveness  and  its  range.  Thoreau,  who  heard  Whipple 
lecture  before  the  Concord  Lyceum  in  December,  1847,  wrote 
about  it  to  Emerson,  who  was  then  in  England,  and  Incidentally 
put  his  finger  upon  one  of  Whipple's  stylistic  sins,  namely,  an 
over-fondness  for  the  Macaulay  trick  of  antithesis :  — 

"We  have  had  Whipple  on  Genius,  —  too  weighty  a  subject 
for  him,  with  his  antithetical  definitions  new-vamped,  —  what  it 
is,  what  It  is  not,  but  altogether  what  It  is  not ;  cuffing  it  this  way 
and  cuffing  It  that,  as  if  it  were  an  Indian-rubber  ball.  Really  It  is 
a  subject  which  should  expand,  expand,  accumulate  itself  before 
the  speaker's  eyes  as  he  goes  on,  like  the  snowballs  which  the  boys 
roll  in  the  streets,  and  when  it  stops.  It  should  be  so  large  that  he 
cannot  start  it,  but  must  leave  It  there." 

The  Lyceum  expert  to  whom  Thoreau  was  writing  could  no 
doubt  develop  a  theme  like  Genius  and  succeed  somehow  in 
"leaving  It  there,"  —  as  one  leaves  a  mountain,  —  but  Macaulay 
certainly  could  not,  nor  any  of  his  mountain-moving  disciples, 
with  their  Incurable  habit  of  saying  "Be  thou  removed!"  to 
things  that  will  not  budge. 

Whipple  was  only  twenty-eight,  however,  when  he  failed  to 
edify  Thoreau,  and  in  the  next  thirty  years  he  performed,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  singularly  useful  service  In  expounding  and  popu- 
larizing not  only  the  great  literature  of  the  past,  but  also  the  work 
of  his  contemporaries.  Certainly  no  member  of  the  Saturday  Club 
has  ever  been  more  loyally  felicitous  in  characterizing  the  liter- 
ary work  of  his  associates.  His  essay  on  Agasslz  In  1857  and  his 
Recollections  of  Agassiz  after  the  latter's  death,  the  essays  on 
Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Prescott,  Motley,  Sumner,  Andrew,  and 
Lowell,  are  full  of  interesting  personal  anecdote,  and  illuminating 
characterizations.  His  essay  on  Emerson,  for  example,  gives  one 
of  the  best  descriptions  ever  made  of  Emerson's  voice  and  manner 
as  a  public  speaker.  Whipple's  enthusiasm  for  his  friends  had  no 
touch  of  envy.  He  knew  their  books  thoroughly,  and  delighted  to 


Edwin  Percy  Whipple 


121 


praise  what  he  found  praiseworthy.  No  small  part  of  the  popu- 
lar reputation  enjoyed  from  i860  to  1880  by  the  Saturday  Club 
group  is  due  to  the  self-effacing  activity  of  Whipple  on  thus  inter- 
preting for  the  public  the  books  of  greater  writers  than  himself. 

He  was  personally  well  liked  by  his  fellow-members,  as  he  de- 
served to  be;  an  agreeable  table-companion,  who  frankly  enjoyed 
his  food  and  particularly  his  wine,  and  never  missed  a  dinner. 
His  "radiant,  playful  wit"  was  commented  upon  by  Emerson, 
and  living  members  of  the  Club  recall  with  pleasure  his  alert, 
slight  figure,  his  mobile,  benevolent  merchant's  face  with  its  mag- 
nificent forehead,  and  his  courteous  demeanor.  He  appreciated 
the  telling  contrasts  in  character  afforded  by  the  earlier  members, 
and  twice,  in  his  published  essays,  he  went  so  far  as  to  maintain 
that  the  Club  was  really  "a  society  based  on  mutual  repulsion." 
There  is  some  designed  hyperbole  here,  of  course,  but  the  point  is 
so  interesting  in  its  bearing  upon  the  usual  theory  of  clubs  that 
the  passages  must  be  quoted. 

In  his  Recollections  of  Agassiz  he  remarks:  "He  was  the  recog- 
nized head,  the  chairman,  of  a  peculiar  Boston  Club,  admission 
to  which  depended  rather  on  antipathy  than  sympathy,  as  re- 
gards the  character  and  pursuits  of  its  members.  It  was  ingen- 
iously supposed  that  persons  who  looked  on  all  questions  of  science, 
theology,  and  literature  from  different  points  of  view  would  be  the 
very  persons  who  would  most  enjoy  one  another's  company  once 
a  month  at  a  dinner-table.  Intellectual  anarchy  was  proclaimed 
as  the  fundamental  principle  of  this  new  organization,  or  rather 
disorganization;  no  man  could  be  voted  in  who  had  not  shown  by 
his  works  his  disagreement  with  those  who  were  to  be  associated 
with  him;  and  the  result  was,  of  course,  the  most  tolerant  and 
delightful  of  social  meetings.  Societies  based  on  mutual  admira- 
tion had  been  tried,  and  they  had  failed;  here  was  a  society  based 
on  mutual  repulsion,  and  It  was  a  success  from  the  start.  The 
two  extremes  were  Agassiz  the  naturalist  and  Emerson  the  tran- 
scendentalist;  and  they  were  the  first  to  become  intimate  friends, 
—  nothing  could  exceed  the  admiration  of  Agassiz  for  Emerson's 
intellectual  and  personal  character.  The  other  members  agreed 
to  disagree  after  a  similar  charming  fashion,  and  the  contact  and 


122 


The  Saturday  Club 


collision  of  so  many  discordant  minds  produced  a  constant  suc- 
cession of  electric  sparks  both  of  thought  and  wit.  Probably  not 
even  the  club  of  which  Johnson,  Burke,  Reynolds,  Garrick,  and 
Goldsmith  were  members  brought  so  many  forcible  individuals 
into  such  good-natured  opposition,  or  afforded  a  fairer  field  for  the 
display  of  varied  talents  and  accomplishments.  When  they  were 
all  seated  at  one  board,  and  the  frolic  hostilities  of  opinion  broke 
out  in  the  free  play  of  wit  and  argument,  of  pointed  assertion  and 
prompt  retort,  the  effect  was  singularly  exhilarating.  Indeed,  there 
is  no  justification  for  a  long  dinner  where  the  attraction  is  simply 
in  the  succession  of  choice  dishes  and  the  variety  of  rare  wines. 
In  all  really  good  dinners  the  brain  and  heart  are  more  active  than 
the  palate  and  the  stomach." 

Again,  in  Whipple's  admirable  essay  on  "Motley  the  Histo- 
rian," he  speaks  of  "the  Saturday  Club  of  Boston — an  association 
composed  of  some  fifteen  or  twenty  persons,  who  were  elected  to 
membership  on  the  ground  that  they  were  generally  opposed  to 
each  other  in  mind,  character,  and  pursuits,  and  that  therefore 
conversation  at  the  monthly  dinner  of  the  club  would  naturally 
assume  quite  an  animated  if  not  controversial  tone.  Motley  de- 
lighted in  this  association,  as  it  gave  full  play  for  the  friendly  col- 
lision of  his  own  intellect  with  the  intellects  of  others,  —  intel- 
lects of  which  some  were  as  keen,  bright,  and  rapid  as  his  own." 

Whipple  then  goes  on  to  describe  a  triangular  duel  of  wit  be- 
tween Motley,  Holmes,  and  Lowell,  which  is  quoted  elsewhere 
in  the  present  volume. 

Whipple's  own  good  sayings  were  numerous.  The  best  known, 
no  doubt,  is  that  recorded  by  Emerson  in  his  journal^  apparently 
after  a  dinner  of  the  Club:  "Whipple  said  of  the  author  of  Leaves 
of  Grass  that  he  had  every  leaf  but  the  fig  leaf."  Dr.  Bartol,  in  his 
funeral  discourse  upon  Whipple,  quotes  another:  "'I  know,'  said 
one  to  him,  *your  idea  of  a  public  library;  if  you  had  a  million 
dollars.'  *  If  I  had  the  million,'  Whipple  answered,  '  I  should  not 
have  the  idea.'" 

Dr.  Bartol's  tribute,  which  is  now  printed  in  the  current  edi- 
tion of  Whipple's  Recollection  of  Eminent  Men,  touches,  in  a  very 
few  words,  the  essence  of  his  old  friend's  nature.   He  praises, 


Edwin  Percy  Whipple  123 

indeed,  his  quality  as  a  critic,  his  "infallible  divination  of  charac- 
ter," his  aptness  at  distinctions,  his  disinterestedness  and  imparti- 
ality. But  what  chiefly  impressed  Dr.  Bartol  was  Whipple's  sweet- 
ness and  modesty.  "Never,"  he  said,  "has  the  community  been 
addressed  and  instructed  by  a  man  in  his  temper  more  retiring 
and  in  his  habit  more  retired.  .  .  .  He  nestled  like  a  timid  bird  in 
his  home,  among  his  kindred  and  companions,  with  his  books, 
his  children,  and  his  mate.  .  .  .  He  lived  to  do  honour  to  others, 
and  to  forget  himself  in  awarding  to  everybody  else  the  meed  of 
desert.  .  .  .  He  had  an  eminent  magnanimity.  ...  I  never  heard 
a  word  of  envy  from  his  lips;  I  never  saw  a  spark  of  malice  in  his 
eye.  He  rejoiced  in  his  comrade's  superiority  and  success."  To 
have  deserved  such  a  characterization  is  achievement  enough. 

B.  P. 


HORATIO  WOODMAN 

That  Mr.  Woodman's  skill  and  tact  brought  the  long  desired 
Club  into  being  has  been  clearly  shown.  Mr.  Ward's  suggestions 
as  to  less  didactic  membership,  and  monthly  dinners,  had  made 
the  scheme  more  attractive,  but  Woodman's  determination  to 
be  of  the  companj^,  and  his  special  talent  as  high  steward  of  the 
feast,  which  he  had  the  wit  quietly  to  demonstrate  in  advance, 
made  the  Club  a  comfortable  fact,  just  when  danger  threatened 
of  its  being  turned  by  outsiders,  for  a  definite  good  purpose,  into 
something  quite  different  and  transient,  where  Care  would  have 
always  had  his  chair  among  the  friends. 

Gratitude  and  honour,  then,  are  due  to  Woodman's  memory. 
He  came  from  Maine,  born  in  the  little  town  of  Buxton  on  the 
Saco  River,  in  1821.  Like  many  youths  with  love  for  letters,  he 
began  mature  life  as  teacher  of  a  country  school.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  had  a  college  education,  but  came  to  Boston  to 
study  and  practise  law. 

Mr.  Woodman  was  a  rather  slight,  alert  man  with  reddish  hair 
and  English  whiskers. 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  in  his  memoir  of  Dana  says:  "Dr. 
Gould,  the  mathematician  and  astronomer,  defined  Woodman  as 
*a  genius  broker,'  and  the  definition  was  a  happy  one,  for  he  had 
a  craving  for  the  acquaintance  and  society  of  men  of  reputation, 
and,  indeed,  lacked  only  the  industry  to  have  been  a  sort  of  Bos- 
well.  .  .  .  An  amusing  story-teller  with  a  natural  eye  for  character 
and  a  well-developed  sense  of  humour.  Woodman  had  at  his  com- 
mand an  almost  inexhaustible  fund  of  anecdotes  relating  to  the 
men  who,  in  those  days,  made  the  Parker  House  and  its  somewhat 
famous  restaurant  a  sort  of  headquarters.  Though,  during  the 
Rebellion,  he  was  sufficiently  active  and  prominent  to  have  been 
offered  the  position  of  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  yet  in  his  own 
mind  the  great  achievement  of  his  life  was  the  founding  of  the 
Saturday  Club,  and  his  connection  with  that  Club  which  could 
only  have  come  about  through  his  being  its  founder,  was  the  thing 
on  which  he  most  prided  himself." 


Horatio  TVoodman  125 

Mr.  Woodman  was  a  member  of  the  Adirondack  Club  from  its 
formation.  In  their  first  camp,  at  Follansbee  Pond,  Mr.  Emerson 
made  some  attempts  to  sketch  in  verse  some  of  the  company, 
Woodman  among  others.  From  his  notebook  on  that  occasion 
the  following  siftings  from  various  trial-lines  are  presented:  — 

WOODMAN 

Man  of  affairs, 

Harmonizing  oddest  pairs 

With  a  passion  to  unite 

Oil  and  water,  if  he  might; 

Loves  each  in  turn,  but  looks  beyond. 

Gentle  mind,  outrageous  matter; 

Filled  with  Shakspeare  —  down  to  Choate; 

His  catholic  admiration, 

Adoring  Jesus,  can  excuse  Iscariot. 

We  that  know  him 

Much  we  owe  him; 

Skilled  to  work  in  the  Age  of  Bronze; 

Loves  to  turn  it  to  account 

Of  the  helpless,  callow  brood 

From  the  Muses'  mount. 

Fond  of  merit  runs  the  scale 

Of  genial  approbation. 

Skilled  was  he  to  reconcile 

Scientific  feud. 

To  pacify  the  injured  heart 

And  mollify  the  rude; 

And,  while  genius  he  respected, 

Hastes  to  succor  the  neglected; 

And  was  founder  of  the  Club 

Most  modest  in  the  famous  Hub. 

To  Emerson,  as  to  all  Free-Soilers,  the  disappointment,  the 
shock  of  Mr.  Choate's  indifference,  in  the  matter  of  the  surrender 
of  the  poor  fugitives  Sims  and  Burns,  was  very  great.  To  them 
an  immoral  law  was  necessarily  void.  The  legal  mind  is  less  rev- 
olutionary. Woodman,  from  the  time  he  came  as  a  young  man 
to  Boston,  had  a  hero-worship  of  Choate.  At  the  time  of  Choate's 
death  in  1859,  Woodman  wrote  a  remarkable  article  in  the  Atlantic^ 
a  tribute  of  affection  as  well  as  admiration,  but  commanding 
attention  by  its  style. 


12  6  T'he  Saturday  Club 

Mrs.  Florence  Hall,  daughter  of  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  remem- 
bers Mr.  Woodman  at  their  home  in  her  youth,  and  recalls  the 
fact  that  he  was  an  excellent  story-teller.  He  could  tell  Yankee 
stories  very  well,  having  been  a  schoolmaster  "Down-East,"  she 
thinks.  She  speaks  of  him  as  a  friend  of  Governor  Andrew  and 
her  father. 

Mr.  Woodman  was  active  and  public-spirited  during  war-time. 
He  looked  younger  than  he  really  was,  and  was,  at  that  time,  prob- 
ably very  near  the  limit  of  the  military  age.  When  the  Union  Club 
was  founded,  he  was  one  of  the  early  members. 

That  he  should  have  been  thought  of  for  assistant  secretary  to 
Stanton  in  the  War  Office  proves  that  he  was  recognized  as  able 
and  patriotic  by  Boston's  leading  loyal  men.  The  following  ex- 
tract from  a  letter  written  to  him,  just  after  the  return  of  peace, 
by  Mr.  Forbes,  urging  him,  as  having  influence  with  Stanton,  to 
protest  at  some  ugly  doings  at  Atlanta,  ignored  and  unpunished, — 
probably  against  negroes,  —  shows  that  Forbes  credited  Woodman 
with  some  force  and  humanity:  — 

"It  would  be  of  no  use  for  me  to  say  this  to  Mr.  Stanton,  who, 
though  always  personally  courteous,  has  been  led  by  circum- 
stances, or  by  some  of  my  politic  friends  at  Washington,  to  class 
me  among  the  sentimental  theorists  and  men  of  but  one  idea, 
whom  I  do  not  value  in  action  much  higher  than  he  does;  but 
if  you  were  to  say  it  for  the  Transcript  (his  steady  advocate  and 
defender)  I  think  he  would  first  correct  the  abuse,  and  next  give 
you  the  means  of  proving  to  the  public  that  he  had  done  so,  and 
that  he  was  in  earnest  in  putting  his  foot  hard  upon  all  such 
offenders." 

At  one  of  the  Albion  dinners  which  Woodman  arranged,  a  year 
or  so  before  the  Club  came  into  being,  he,  a  skilled  gastronome^ 
cooked  mushrooms  on  the  table.  The  more  rural  or  ascetic  mem- 
bers of  the  company  were  unused  to  this  luxury.  Dwight  was 
deputed,  according  to  Emerson's  journal,  to  taste  and  report.  He 
bravely  experimented  and  mildly  said,  "  It  tastes  like  the  roof  of 
a  house." 
Mr.  Woodman  was  married  rather  late  in  middle  life. 
Between  1875  ^^<^  ^^79  ^^  became  seriously  involved  in  some 


Horatio  Woodman  127 

business  transactions,  and  increasingly  depressed.  He  was  lost 
from  a  steamboat  during  a  trip  to  New  York  in  1879. 

A  lady,  who,  in  her  youth,  often  met  Mr.  Woodman  at  her 
father's  house,  and  in  society,  tells  me  that  she  was  much  touched 
by  the  loyally  kind  and  considerate  expressions  of  members  of 
the  Saturday  Club  with  regard  to  their  late  friend  when  she  in- 
quired of  them  about  his  latter  days.  She  also  bore  this  pleas- 
ant testimony:  "There  is  no  manner  of  doubt  that  Mr.  Wood- 
man's admiration  of  the  men  of  letters  and  science,  for  whom  his 
organizing  skill  and  zeal  made  the  wished-for  Club  a  reality,  was 
most  earnest  and  genuine." 

At  the  time  of  this  sad  ending  it  is  good  to  turn  back  to  our 
record  of  April,  1871,  and  Woodman's  inspired  poem  "The  Flag." 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  IV 

1857 

Go,  bid  the  broad  Atlantic  scroll 
Be  herald  of  the  free.  1 


Once  again  the  pine-tree  sung:  — 
*  Speak  not  thy  speech  my  boughs  among; 
Put  off  thy  years,  wash  in  the  breeze; 
My  hours  are  peaceful  centuries.' 

Emerson,  Woodnotes 

THIS  year  was  remembered  with  pride  and  pleasure  by  the 
early  members  because,  first,  of  an  event  important  in  the 
literary  history  of  America  in  which  many  of  them  were  con- 
cerned and  all  interested;  and,  second,  of  a  delightful  enterprise,  in 
which  many  joined.  These  were  the  launching  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly^  and  the  founding  of  the  Adirondack  Club. 

The  story  of  the  earnest  purpose  of  Mr.  Underwood  to  found 
this  magazine,  and  the  credit  due  to  him  in  awakening  the  inter- 
est of  Mr,  Phillips,  the  publisher,  has  been  told.  Of  the  member- 
ship during  the  Saturday  Club's  first  twenty  years  about  half 
were  contributors  to  the  Atlantic^  and  many  living  members  have 
written  for  it.  In  the  days  of  its  greatest  brilliancy  it  had  a  hard 
struggle  to  float;  now,  after  sixty  years  of  good  repute,  it  enjoys 
an  assured  prosperity. 

When,  in  April  of  this  year,  Lowell  consented  to  be  the  Editor, 
by  happy  inspiration  making  it  a  condition  that  Holmes  should 
contribute,  the  wish,  long  felt,  for  a  magazine  worthy  of  New 
England  was  assured  of  fulfilment.  He  asked  the  same  favour  of 
Longfellow,  who,  only  promising  to  write  for  this  magazine,  if 

^  In  excuse  of  this  perversion  of  the  word  Atlantic  from  its  significance  in  Emerson's 
Fourth  of  July  Ode  in  1857,  the  Editor  may  plead;  first,  that  the  new  magazine  soon  won 
its  way  abroad,  and,  second,  that  one  of  the  main  purposes  of  its  founding  was  that  it 
should  be  an  organ  of  Freedom. 


1857 


I  29 


for  any,  nevertheless  did  so.  Phillips's  recruiting  dinner,  earlier 
mentioned,  occurred  early  in  May,  and,  in  September,  the  maga- 
zine was  launched.  It  was  Holmes  who  christened  it  "The 
Atlantic." 

It  is  not  worth  while  here  to  go  further  into  particulars  about 
this  important  event,  as  the  whole  story,  told  by  most  competent 
writers  early  connected  with  the  magazine,  has  been  told  in  the 
semi-centennial  number  of  the  Atlantic ^'^  as  well  as  in  Mr.  Scudder's 
Life  of  Lowell.  But  it  is  pleasant  to  recall  that,  in  the  first  num- 
ber, Lowell  wrote  a  sonnet,  also  his  amusing  "Origin  of  Didactic 
Poetry";  Longfellow  his  beautiful  "Santa  Filomena";  William 
H.  Prescott  contributed  his  "Battle  of  Lepanto";  Motley,  "Flor- 
entine Mosaics";  Emerson,  the  poems  "Days,"  "Brahma," 
"The  Romany  Girl,"  and  "The  Chartist's  Complaint,"  also  the 
essay  "Illusions";  and  Dr.  Holmes,  checked,  twenty-five  years 
before,  by  the  failure  of  a  magazine  in  the  midst  of  his  serial, 
began  his  "Autocrat"  contributions  thus,  "As  I  was  going  to  say 
when  I  was  interrupted."  ^  Whittier,  not  a  member  of  the  Club, 
until  the  next  year,  gave  his  "Gift  of  Tritemius."  For  the  second 
number  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Cabot,  Motley,  Whittier, 
and  Emerson  of  the  Club  wrote,  besides  various  others.  For  a  long 
time  the  names  of  the  writers  were  not  given. 

The  enterprise  that  helped  to  give  distinction  to  this  same  sum- 
mer was  a  sort  of  crusade  on  Nature's  behalf,  preached  by  an 
enthusiast,  William  J.  Stillman,  and  gallantly  led  by  him  the  fol- 
lowing year.  Born  in  the  State  of  New  York  in  uncongenial  sur- 
roundings, he  was  led  on  by  insistent  Nature  through  briars  that 
tangled  his  path  to  his  destiny  of  art  and  letters,  and  chivalrous 
labours  to  help  oppressed  peoples.  He  had  come  to  New  England 
in  1855,  and  his  fine  quality  and  promise  had  been  at  once  gener- 
ously welcomed  by  Lowell  and  Norton.  Of  him  Norton  wrote: 
"He  Interests  me  greatly.  I  have  never  known  any  one  more 
earnest  and  faithful  in  his  desire  and  search  for  spiritual  improve- 

^  September,  1907. 

^  The  Doctor,  remarking  on  this  early  episode,  wrote,  "The  man  is  father  to  the  boy 
that  was,  and  I  am  my  own  son,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  those  papers  of  the  New  England 
Magazine."  His  "son,"  then,  who  was  untimely  nipped  in  his  first  autocracy,  was  but 
twenty-three  years  old. 


130  The  Saturday  Club 

ment.  .  .  .  He  is  too  self-introverted  to  be  happy,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  life  have  been  sad.  .  .  .  He  needs  inspiriting." 
Encouraged  and  backed  by  his  new  friends,  Stillman  started  and 
conducted  The  Crayon^  the  first  art  magazine  published  in  this 
country.  I  think  that  both  Norton  and  Lowell  contributed  to  it, 
and  probably  induced  others  to  do  so,  as  well  as  to  subscribe.  But 
the  magazine  withered  soon,  born  before  its  time.  Stillman, 
spiritually  refreshed,  and  now  inspired  by  Ruskin's  books,  went 
as  a  painter  to  struggle  with  Nature  in  her  most  difficult  aspect, 
the  primeval  scenery  of  the  Adirondack  Mountains.  Refreshed 
by  the  sympathy  he  had  met,  and  his  most  fortunate  friendships, 
and  with  the  moral  inspiration  of  this  new  prophet,  cast  in  beau- 
tiful form,  Stillman  worked  alone  and  faithfully;  learned  much  of 
painting  by  doing  it.  But  he  found  other  and  valued  masters 
there,  and  in  new  and  attractive  courses,  the  manly,  straightfor- 
ward pioneers  and  hunters  of  the  region.  They  liked  him,  too, 
and  soon  he  was  their  equal,  respected  as  such,  with  axe  and  oar 
and  rifle  and  in  the  secrets  of  woodcraft. 

In  1857,  Stillman  determined  that  his  friends  must  see,  and 
perhaps  save,  before  the  chance  forever  vanished,  this  virgin 
relic  of  the  ancient  earth,  the  forest  home  whence  man  emerged 
ages  ago  to  broader  horizons  of  civilization.  Lowell  was  the  one 
through  whom  to  work,  and  Stillman  lured  him  thither.  In  August 
1857,  Norton,  writing  to  Clough,  says:  "I  found  Lowell  very  well 
and  in  capital  spirits,  having  just  returned  from  a  wild,  camping- 
out  journey  to  the  Adirondack  Mountains.  He  has  been  cutting 
paths  through  woods  in  which  no  paths  had  ever  been  made  be- 
fore, he  had  shot  a  bear  that  was.  swimming  a  lake,  he  had  seen 
herds  of  wild  deer,  and  measured  pine  trees  whose  trunks  three 
men  could  not  clasp  around." 

Then  Stillman  found  that  a  tract  of  some  thousands  of  acres, 
beautiful  Ampersand  Pond,  with  its  islands  and  their  gigantic 
Norway  (now  called  "red")  pines,  and  the  encircling  mountains, 
were  offered  at  sheriff's  sale  because  of  non-payment  of  taxes. 
The  price  asked  was  astonishingly  low.  Lowell  interested  many 
members  of  our  Club,  and  some  others,  friends  and,  later,  mem- 
bers, and  this  wild  Paradise  became  theirs,  yet  subject  to  re- 


i857 


131 


demption,  which  seemed  hardly  likely  and  was  limited  to  a  few 
years.  Stillman  says,  "The  Lake  was  a  mile  and  a  half  long, 
.  .  .  the  forest  standing  as  it  had  stood  before  Columbus  sailed 
from  Palos."  ^  Thus  the  enterprise  was  begun  and  members 
enlisted  in  1857,  but  the  story  of  their  first  crusade  will  appear 
in  its  proper  place  in  the  following  summer. 

Longfellow  records  in  his  journal  an  affectionate  and  moving 
occasion  thus:  "May  28,  1857.  A  rainy  day.  The  fiftieth  or 
golden  birthday  of  Agassiz.  We  gave  him  a  dinner  at  Parker's; 
fourteen  of  us;  at  which  I  presided.  I  proposed  the  health  of 
Agassiz  and  read  a  poem.  Holmes  and  Lowell  read  humorous 
poems  which  were  very  clever.  We  sat  down  at  half-past  three 
and  stayed  till  nine."  May  28  seems  to  have  come  on  Wednesday, 
that  year,  so  the  Club  dinner  must  have  been  moved  forward  to 
meet  the  occasion.  Emerson,  in  his  mention  of  the  occasion  in 
his  journal,  gives  the  names  of  ten  whom  he  counts  members, 
but  speaks  of  Holmes,  Felton,  Dresel,  and  Hillard  as  "strangers" 
(i.e.,  outsiders).  Holmes,  however,  had  apparently  been  chosen 
in  at  the  previous  meeting,  and  Felton  certainly  was,  shortly 
after.  Emerson  adds:  "Agassiz  brought  what  had  just  been 
sent  him,  the  last  coloured  plates  to  conclude  the  volume  of  his 
'Contributions,  etc'  which  will  now  be  published  Incontinently. 
.  .  .  The  flower  of  the  feast  was  the  reading  of  three  poems  writ- 
ten by  our  three  poets  for  the  occasion,  ...  all  excellent  in  their 
way."   This  was  Longfellow's :  — 

THE  FIFTIETH  BIRTHDAY  OF  AGASSIZ 

It  was  fifty  years  ago 

In  the  pleasant  month  of  May, 
In  the  beautiful  Pays  de  Vaud, 

A  child  in  its  cradle  lay. 

And  Nature,  the  old  nurse,  took 
The  child  upon  her  knee, 

^  Through  Stillman,  the  Club  bought  the  entire  section  (less  joo  acres)  of  the  mountains 
clad  with  primeval  forest,  around  beautiful  Ampersand  Pond,  22,500  acres.  The  price 
was  $660. 


132  "The  Saturday  Club 

Saying:  "Here  is  a  story-book 
Thy  Father  has  written  for  thee." 

"  Come,  wander  with  me,"  she  said, 
"Into  regions  yet  untrod; 
And  read  what  is  still  unread 
In  the  manuscripts  of  God," 

And  he  wandered  away  and  away 

With  Nature,  the  dear  old  nurse. 
Who  sang  to  him  night  and  day 

The  rhymes  of  the  universe. 

And  whenever  the  way  seemed  long. 

Or  his  heart  began  to  fail. 
She  would  sing  a  more  wonderful  song. 

Or  tell  a  more  marvellous  tale. 

So  she  keeps  him  still  a  child, 

And  will  not  let  him  go, 
Though  at  times  his  heart  beats  wild 

For  the  beautiful  Pays  de  Vaud; 

Though  at  times  he  hears  in  his  dreams 

The  Ranz  des  Vaches  of  old. 
And  the  rush  of  mountain  streams 

From  glaciers  clear  and  cold; 

And  the  mother  at  home  says,  "Hark! 

For  his  voice  I  listen  and  yearn; 
It  is  growing  late  and  dark. 

And  my  boy  does  not  return!" 

Agassiz  was  deeply  moved  by  the  poem,  and  by  the  plea.  It 
is  a  relief  and  joy  to  remember  that  he  was  with  or  near  his  mother 
at  Lausanne  throughout  the  summer  of  1859. 

Another  festivity  in  which  members  of  the  Club  took  part  came 
on  August  7.  The  date  was  inconvenient  for  the  regular  gath- 
ering, so  probably  many  others  than  members  may  have  joined 
them  in  giving  this  dinner  to  Motley,  who,  the  year  before,  having 
won  fame  by  his  Dutch  Republic^  had  returned  home  and  was  then 
about  to  sail  for  Europe  to  pursue  his  great  theme  in  The  United 
Netherlands.  Holmes  read  a  poem  of  which  a  portion  is  here  given : 


i857 


133 


A  PARTING  HEALTH 

Yes,  we  knew  we  must  lose  him  —  though  friendship  may  claim 
To  blend  her  green  leaves  with  the  laurels  of  fame; 
Though  fondly,  at  parting,  we  call  him  our  own, 
*T  is  the  whisper  of  love  when  the  bugle  has  blown. 

As  the  rider  that  rests  with  the  spur  on  his  heel, 
As  the  guardsman  that  sleeps  in  his  corselet  of  steel, 
As  the  archer  that  stands  with  his  shaft  on  the  string, 
He  stoops  from  his  toil  to  the  garland  we  bring. 

What  pictures  yet  slumber  unborn  in  his  loom, 

Till  their  warriors  shall  breathe,  and  their  beauties  shall  bloom, 

While  the  tapestry  lengthens  the  life-glowing  dyes 

That  caught  from  our  sunsets  the  stain  of  their  skies! 

In  alcoves  of  death,  in  the  charnels  of  time, 
Where  flit  the  gaunt  spectres  of  passion  and  crime, 
There  are  triumphs  untold,  there  are  martyrs  unsung, 
There  are  heroes  yet  silent  to  speak  with  his  tongue! 

Let  us  hear  the  proud  story  which  time  has  bequeathed. 
From  lips  that  are  warm  with  the  freedom  they  breathed! 
Let  him  summon  its  tyrants,  and  tell  us  their  doom. 
Though  he  sweep  the  black  past  like  Van  Tromp  with  his  broom! 

The  dream  flashes  by,  for  the  west-winds  awake 
On  pampas,  on  prairie,  o'er  mountain  and  lake. 
To  bathe  the  swift  bark,  like  the  sea-girdled  shrine. 
With  an  incense  they  stole  from  the  rose  and  the  pine. 

So  fill  a  bright  cup  with  the  sunlight  that  gushed 
When  the  dead  summer's  jewels  were  trampled  and  crushed; 
The  True  Knight  of  Learning,  —  the  world  holds  him  dear, — 
Love  bless  him,  Joy  crown  him,  God  speed  his  career! 

This  year  and  those  that  followed  were  times  of  much  public 
anxiety  and  ferment.  These  drew  friends  more  closely  together, 
and  it  was  well  to  have  dark  days  lit  up  by  occasional  festive 
gatherings.  But  also  these  Club  meetings  were  important  for  dis- 
cussion, and  it  might  be  to  promote  individual  or  concerted  action. 
For  the  years  of  Buchanan's  Administration,  as  of  Pierce's,  were 
those  of  constant  struggle  to  keep  Kansas  and  Nebraska  free. 


134  The  Saturday  Club 

and  to  protect  and  arm  Northern  settlers  against  intimidation  and 
outrage.  Free-State  men  from  Kansas,  John  Brown  among  them, 
were  telling  to  audiences  in  cities  and  villages  throughout  New 
England  of  the  driving  of  citizens  from  the  polls  by  raiding  parties 
of  Missourians,  who  then  voted  in  their  places,  their  actions  con- 
nived at  by  the  Administration.  At  these  meetings  money  was 
freely  given  by  rich  and  poor  to  encourage  settlers  from  New 
England,  and  arm  them  with  Sharps  rifles. 

Here,  in  accordance  with  what  has  been  already  told  of  the 
order  and  time  of  their  entry  into  the  Club  informally,  the  sketches 
of  the  members  chosen  in  1857  find  place,  all  of  them  men  of  let- 
ters and  professors  in  Harvard  University,  one  of  whom  became 
its  President. 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 

Longfellow,  in  his  childhood  in  Maine,  was  spoken  of  as  "the 
sunlight  of  the  house."  In  the  Portland  home  were  kindly,  re- 
fined people,  and  good  books.  Born  a  scholar  and  thirsting  for 
these,  he  also  loved  human  relations,  and,  as  he  grew,  was  eager, 
social,  and  highly  vitalized,  and  his  day-dreams  only  quickened 
his  working-power.  He  had  a  healthy  soul,  and  had  not  the  faults 
often  accompanying  the  artistic  temperament. 

He  graduated  at  Bowdoin  College  —  Hawthorne  was  his  class- 
mate—  in  1825,  already  having  published  verses  which  still 
hold  their  place  in  his  collected  poems.  But  prudent  elders 
looked  on  the  law  as  a  less  precarious  path  to  success.  Providen- 
tially, good  Madam  Bowdoin  had  willed  that,  at  the  college  that 
bore  the  family  name,  there  should  be  a  professor  of  the  French 
and  Spanish,  Italian  and  German  languages.  Such  was  the  promise 
of  this  youth  of  nineteen  that  he  received  the  appointment,  with 
permission  to  go  to  Europe  for  some  time  to  prepare  himself. 
After  two  years  of  happy  study  he  filled  his  place  for  five  years  in 
Bowdoin  so  well  that  Harvard  called  him  to  succeed  George  Tick- 
nor  as  Professor  of  French  and  Spanish  Languages  and  Literature 
and  of  Belles-Lettres.  Again  he  had  the  privilege  and  joy  of  study 
and  travel  on  the  Continent.  After  his  return  to  assume  his  chair 
in  1836,  Cambridge  was  his  home  for  life,  a  very  homelike  and 
rural  Cambridge  then.  Living  at  first  in  the  old  Stearns  house, 
he  was  on  friendliest  terms  with  his  predecessor  Ticknor,  with 
Felton,  eager  scholar,  Hillard,  a  lawyer,  but  more  of  a  man  of 
letters,  and  Henry  R.  Cleveland,  then  a  teacher.  So  important 
were  they  to  each  other,  that  they  were  called  "The  Mutual 
Admiration  Club,"  yet  within  a  few  years  the  moral  issue  of 
slavery,  a  shearing  sword,  divided  Longfellow  from  the  others, 
as  it  did  Dana  and  Sumner  and  Dr.  Howe.  But  this  same  cause 
drew  Longfellow  and  Lowell — neighbours  after  Longfellow  moved 
into  the  Vassall  mansion  —  the  more  together,  close  friends  while 
life  lasted.    All  these  who  follow,  being  of  the  brood  of  Prome- 


13^  T'he  Saturday  Club 

theus,  and  not  of  Epimetheus,  without  a  second  thought  held 
out  a  helping  hand  to  the  slave  while  the  tide  of  society  ran 
strongly  against  them,  but  each  according  to  his  gift:  Sumner 
in  the  Senate;  Dana  in  the  court-room;  Howe  in  his  support  to 
the  conscience-guerilla  John  Brown;  Lowell  by  his  trumpet-calls 
and  his  satires.  But  Longfellow  in  eight  short  poems  showed 
simply  the  extreme  pathos  of  the  negroes'  lot,  but  with  no  bitter- 
ness towards  the  slave-holders,  for  he  could  see  and  pity  the 
state  of  society  into  which  they  were  born.  These  poems  might 
well  have  stirred  the  consciences  of  many  of  the  best  among 
them,  but  Longfellow  yielded  to  his  publishers'  advice  and  let 
them  omit  these  from  the  edition  sold  in  the  South,  for  which 
consent  he  was  attacked  by  the  Abolitionists.^ 

Longfellow  adorned  his  professorship  for  nearly  eighteen  years. 
That  course,  also  under  Ticknor  before  him  and  Lowell  his  suc- 
cessor, afforded  at  least  one  oasis  in  much  dry  country.  Unhap- 
pily its  elevating  and  sweetening  effect  was  lost  to  all  but  a  few, 
for  it  was  an  "elective."  In  practical  New  England,  where  youths 
were  expecting  to  be  lawyers,  doctors,  merchants,  elementary 
teachers,  the  course  in  Modern  Languages  and  Belles-Lettres 
was  not  crowded,  though  when  Southern  youths  formed  a  large 
contingent,  it  was  probably  more  popular  than  later.  But  when 
one  reflects  on  the  hours  spent  reciting  Whately's  Logic  or  Rhet- 
oric, or  Bowen's  propagandum  of  Protection  exclusively,  and  the 
merely  grammatical  emphasis  of  many  of  the  instructors  in  Latin 
and  Greek,  one  can  but  regret  that  this  humane  course  had  not 
been  as  obligatory  as  attendance  on  prayers.  Yet  we  may  well 
guess  that  Lowell,  Norton,  Ward,  Story,  Appleton,  and  the  Per- 
kinses made  first  acquaintance  with  Longfellow  in  classroom, 
and  that  their  future  was  affected  by  his  influence. 

Though  Longfellow  does  not  seem  to  have  been  intimate  with 

*  But  this  course  perhaps  saved  for  that  region  the  general  humanizing  influence  of  the 
poet,  by  not  risking  his  general  rejection,  which  some  inflammatory  newspaper  article  on 
the  slave  poems  might  have  caused.  It  was  well  said  by  Underwood:  "Aman  of  Longfellow's 
quiet,  scholarly  habits  and  refined  taste  could  not  have  been  an  agitator.  The  bold  de- 
nunciation of  a  Boanerges  would  ill  have  befitted  his  lips.  He  would  have  felt  out  of  place 
upon  the  platform  of  an  anti-slavery  meeting.  But  his  influence,  though  quiet,  was  per- 
vasive, and  it  was  a  comfort  to  many  earnest  men  to  know  that  the  first  scholars  and 
poets  were  in  sympathy  with  their  hopes,  their  prayers  and  labours." 


Henry  W^adsworth  Longfellow    137 

Hawthorne  in  college,  his  notice  of  Hawthorne*s  first  tales  was 
kind  and  helpful,  and  Hawthorne  passed  on  to  Longfellow  a  sad 
story  of  Acadie,  told  him  by  another,  which  came  out  in  beauty 
from  Longfellow's  hands  and  gave  him  his  first  wide  fame.  Its 
old-world  element  appealed  to  Longfellow.  Though  from  youth 
to  age  a  good  American,  the  first  enchantment  of  Europe  always 
remained  with  a  man,  who,  in  youth,  going  forth  from  a  forest 
State,  had  wandered  and  tarried  in  lands  of  history  and  romance 
and  art,  where  the  face  of  Nature  and  the  works  of  man  are  mel- 
lowed by  Time  into  a  new  beauty.  Although  his  mansion,  with 
formal  grounds,  in  a  quiet  university  town,  and  its  hospitality  to 
men  of  letters  and  distinction  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  his 
own  mild  dignity,  finished  speech,  and  careful  dress,  suggested 
English  aristocracy,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  lines  of  a 
recent  popular  poem  were  most  applicable  to  him,  — 

"He  lived  in  a  house  by  the  side  of  the  road 
And  was  the  friend  of  man." 

No  eight-foot-high  wall  with  its  Ivy  eked  out  by  green  broken-glass, 
nor  forbidding  serving-men,  guarded  his  privacy.  A  lord  might 
dine  with  him  one  day,  and  a  seedy,  almost  mendicant  teacher  or 
adventurer  the  next.  His  hospitality  was  Arabian.  Mr.  Norton 
said  that  it  was  the  penalty  of  his  genius  and  kindliness  that 
bores  of  all  nations,  especially  his  own,  persecuted  him;  he  would 
not  show  his  weariness.  "One  day  I  ventured  to  remonstrate 
with  him  on  his  endurance  of  one  of  the  worst  of  the  class,  a 
wretched  creature.  .  .  .  He  looked  at  me  with  a  pleasant,  reprov- 
ing, humorous  glance  and  said,  'Charles,  who  would  be  kind  to 
him  if  I  were  not.'"  Within  eight  months,  a  Cuban,  a  Peruvian, 
a  German,  and  three  Italians  came  to  him  to  get  them  places  In 
Harvard  College,  presumably  to  teach  their  native  tongues.  No 
wonder  he  chafes  in  the  privacy  of  his  journal,  —  "I  seem  to  be 
quite  banished  from  all  literary  work  save  that  of  my  professor- 
ship! The  day  is  so  full  of  business  and  people  of  all  kinds  coming 
and  going.  When  shall  I  have  quiet .^ — and  will  the  old  poetic 
mood  come  back.?"  Speaking  to  Fields  of  the  poems  which  the 
mails  poured  In  upon  him  "for  candid  judgment,"  he  said:  "These 


13^  The  Saturday  Club 

poems  weaken  me  very  much.  It  Is  like  so  much  water  added  to 
the  spirit  of  poetry."  He  could  not  but  cry  out,  when  alone,  and 
yet  was  uniformly  courteous  as  well  as  charitable  and  kind.  Yet, 
so  healthy  was  his  temperament  and  well  poised  his  character, 
that  during  his  working  years  as  a  professor,  in  spite  of  increasing 
interruptions,  his  poems  sang  themselves  to  him  constantly.  He 
not  only  shot  his  shafts  of  light  out  into  the  world,  but  they  hit  at 
great  distances,  and  they  stuck.  His  verses  early  found  readers 
in  humble  dwellings  and  log  huts,  from  the  Bay  of  Fundy  to  the 
Great  Lakes  and  down  along  the  Mississippi  and  far  beyond,  and 
introduced  a  love  of  poetry  as  no  other  had,  and  let  in  windows 
in  people's  lives.  The  English  welcomed  and  loved  them.  They 
soon,  in  translation,  spread  throughout  Europe,  and  even  Asia 
and  the  African  shores.  A  stay-at-home  "Travel-Club"  in  the 
United  States  could  wander  with  joy,  in  his  poems,  from  Bruges  to 
Prague,  and  thence  to  Kurdistan;  from  Norway  to  Sicily  or  to 
Spain.  Like  Burns,  he  reached  the  high  and  the  low.  It  is  said 
that  the  "Psalm  of  Life"  is  painted  on  fans  in  China. 

A  friend  allows  me  to  use  this  description  of  Longfellow's  out- 
ward appearance  and  kindly  interest  in  college  boys  a  few  years 
before  the  founding  of  the  Club:^  — 

"In  Cambridge,  I  encountered  on  my  first  visit  to  the  post- 
office  a  figure  standing  on  the  steps,  which  at  once  drew  my  at- 
tention. It  was  that  of  a  man  in  his  best  years,  handsome,  genial 
of  countenance,  and  well-groomed.  A  silk-hat  surmounted  his 
well-barbered  head  and  visage,  a  dark  frock-coat  was  buttoned 
about  his  form,  his  shoes  were  carefully  polished,  and  he  twirled 
a  little  cane.  To  my  surprise  he  bowed  to  me  courteously  as  I 
glanced  up.  I  was  very  humble,  young  Westerner  that  I  was,  in 
the  scholastic  town,  and  puzzled  by  the  friendly  nod.  The  man 
was  no  other  than  Longfellow,  and  in  his  politeness  to  me  he  was 
only  following  his  invariable  custom  of  greeting  in  a  friendly  way 
every  student  he  met.  His  niceness  of  attire  rather  amused 
the  boys  of  those  days,  who,  however,  responded  warmly  to  his 
friendliness  and  loved  him  much." 

Longfellow  cared  for  music,  sometimes  found  solitary  enjoy- 

^  From  The  Last  Leaf,  by  Professor  James  Kendall  Hosmer. 


Henry  JVadsworth  Longfellow    139 

ment  in  playing  on  the  piano  in  his  home.  When  Ole  Bull  came 
to  this  country  in  1845,  they  became  friends,  and  the  young  Norse- 
man, in  the  company  at  Howe's  tavern  in  Sudbury,  "The  Way- 
side Inn,"  is  made  to  play  the  part  of  the  bard  reciting  the  saga 
of  King  Olaf.  Luigi  Monti,  the  Italian  exile,  also  figuring  there, 
was  befriended  by  Longfellow  and  probably  owed  to  him  his  place 
as  an  instructor  in  the  College  and  his  honorary  degree. 

In  summer  Longfellow  went  to  Nahant  where  he  enjoyed 
Agassiz  as  a  near  neighbour.  Tom  Appleton  was  sure  to  be  there 
too,  with  his  yacht,  unless  he  was  in  Europe.  Longfellow's  first 
wife  died  very  early.  Later,  he  married  Appleton's  sister.  Mr. 
Norton  spoke  of  her  as  very  beautiful,  "and  her  beauty  was  but 
the  type  of  the  loveliness  and  nobility  of  her  character."  They 
had,  with  their  children,  a  most  happy  home  for  many  years. 
Then  followed  the  tragedy  of  Longfellow's  life.  Her  light  dress 
caught  fire  as  she  was  sealing  little  packages  for  her  children,  and 
she  died  of  her  burns.  Her  husband  was  badly  burned  in  his  des- 
perate attempt  to  save  her. 

"I  have  never  seen  any  one  who  bore  a  great  sorrow  in  a  more 
simple  and  noble  way.  But  he  is  very  desolate,"  wrote  Mr.  Nor- 
ton. "Of  all  happy  homes  theirs  was  in  many  respects  the  happi- 
est. It  was  rich  and  delightful,  not  only  in  outward  prosperity,  but 
in  intimate  blessings.  Those  who  loved  them  could  not  wish  for 
them  anything  better  than  they  had,  for  their  happiness  satisfied 
even  the  imagination." 

The  war  had  brought  its  share  of  anxiety  and  pain  mingled 
with  pride  into  this  home.  Young  Charles  Longfellow  was  com- 
missioned second  lieutenant  in  the  First  Massachusetts  Cavalry 
in  March,  1863,  and  suffered  a  severe  wound  in  the  fight  at 
Kelly's  Ford  in  November. 

All  through  life  Longfellow  held  Dante  in  the  highest  honour. 
In  1849  the  poet-professor  wrote  in  his  journal:  "Work  enough 
upon  my  hands,  with  lectures  on  Dante  and  the  like.  Wonderful 
poet!  What  a  privilege  it  is  to  interpret  this  to  young  hearts.  .  .  ." 

And,  three  days  later:  "Longed  to  write,  .  .  .  but  was  obliged 
to  go  to  college.  Ah,  me!  and  yet  what  a  delight  to  begin  every 
day  with  Dante." 


140  The  Saturday  Club 

And  now  on  the  edge  of  winter,  after  his  bereavement,  his  brother 
says  that  he  felt  the  need  of  a  continuous  and  tranquil  occupation 
for  his  thoughts,  and,  after  some  months,  summoned  up  resolu- 
tion to  take  up  again  the  task  of  translating  Dante,  begun  years 
ago  and  long  laid  aside.  Even  in  earlier  years  he  had  said,  "The 
work  diffused  its  benediction  through  the  day,"  and  now  it 
brought  a  new  blessing,  a  gathering  of  his  neighbours  near  to  him 
in  old  friendship  or  in  love  for  his  loved  poet,  at  regular  inter- 
vals, in  his  own  home,  to  hear  and  discuss  his  translation.  These 
Wednesday  evening  meetings  went  on  for  more  than  two  years. 
In  March,  1867,  Norton  wrote:  "Longfellow  is  busy  with  the  final 
revision  of  his  translation  of  the  Divina  Commedia,  of  which  the 
whole  is  to  be  published  very  soon.  Every  Wednesday  evening 
Lowell  and  I  meet  at  his  house  to  consider  with  him  the  last 
touches  of  his  work;  and  on  Saturday  evenings  he  and  Lowell 
come  to  me  to  read  over  with  me  my  translation  of  the  Fita 
Nuova,  which  is  to  appear  as  a  companion  volume  to  Longfel- 
low's work.  These  evening  studies  are  delightful;  and  after  we 
have  finished  our  work  we  have  a  little  supper  to  which  generally 
one  or  two  other  friends  come  in,  and  at  which  we  always  have  a 
pleasant  time." 

Longfellow  made  his  last  visit  to  Europe  in  1868-69  with  his 
family  and  his  brother-in-law  Appleton.  The  Queen  sent  for  him 
to  come  to  see  her  at  Windsor.  He  received  honorary  degrees 
from  Cambridge  and  Oxford  Universities.  In  town  and  country 
he  was  known  by  high  and  low  and  welcomed  joyfully.  On  the 
Continent  he  visited  all  the  regions  dear  to  him  from  their  asso- 
ciations. He  passed  two  days  with  Tennyson  in  his  home.  When, 
two  months  after  his  return,  he  received  from  him  "The  Coming 
of  Arthur"  and  "The  Holy  Grail,"  he  wrote  in  his  journal,  "What 
dusky  splendours  of  song  there  are  in  King  Alfred's  new  volume." 
It  may  interest,  even  startle,  the  older  Harvard  graduates  of  the 
Club  to  hear  Longfellow's  description  of  Tennyson  to  Lowell, 
"  If  two  men  should  try  to  look  alike,  they  could  not  do  it  better 
than  he  and  Professor  Lovering  without  trying." 

Poems  with  which  Longfellow  graced  certain  special  occasions 
at  the  Club,  or  in  the  memoirs  of  its  members,  will  be  given  in 


Henry  JVadsworth  Longfellow    141 

due  place.  It  is  pleasant  to  know,  and  reassuring  as  to  the  human 
brotherhood  at  large,  that  even  in  this  poet's  lifetime  thanks 
came  to  him  from  all  quarters  of  the  globe,  directly  or  indirectly, 
from  young  and  old  whom  he  had  cheered  and  helped.  Since  his 
death  has  come  in  a  reactionary  period  against  long-received  tra- 
ditions aesthetic,  and  even  the  ethical.  Longfellow,  like  Tennyson, 
has  been  regarded  with  superior  pity  by  apostles  and  practitioners 
of  the  rugged,  the  involved,  the  lawless  in  form  and  subject.  He, 
a  man  of  sweet,  wholesome,  and  normal,  did  not  deal  with  patho- 
logical, but  universal,  experiences.  To  him  selection,  purity,  and 
finish  were  inevitable. 

When  age  overtook  him,  Longfellow  with  brave  cheer  said, 
that  in  its  ashes  and  embers 

"Some  living  sparks  we  still  discern, 
Enough  to  warm  but  not  enough  to  burn. 
The  night  hath  not  yet  come;  we  are  not  quite 
Cut  oif  from  labour  by  the  failing  light, 
For  age  is  opportunity  no  less 
Than  youth  itself,  though  in  another  dress, 
And  as  the  evening  twilight  fades  away 
The  sky  is  filled  with  stars  invisible  by  day." 

Was  it  Norton  who  wrote  —  "He  kept  his  friendships  in  ex- 
cellent repair.  He  was  true  to  what  had  been.  Remembrance 
maintained  life  in  the  ashes  of  old  affection  and  he  never  made 
his  own  fame,  or  his  many  occupations  an  excuse  for  disregarding 
the  claim  of  a  dull  acquaintance,  or  of  one  failing  in  the  world  "  ? 
With  all  his  wide  fame,  this  poet  was  a  man  of  nobility  and  sweet- 
ness, not  formal,  nor  patronizing,  highly  refined,  but  also  highly 
human;  yet  the  kind  of  person  whose  presence  would  naturally 
make  it  impossible  for  coarseness  or  rudeness  to  get  so  far  as  to 
make  reproof  essential. 

He  was  spared  long  debility.  His  death  was  from  acute  pneu- 
monia, March  24,  1882.  Emerson  went  to  the  last  offices  with 
his  daughter  Ellen.  Next  day  she  wrote:  "We  went  yesterday  to 
Mr.  Longfellow's  funeral.  People  did  not  go  up  to  look  at  him,  I 
don't  know  why,  but  as  I  could  see  him  from  where  I  stood,  it 
seemed  as  if  he  must  look  very  beautiful.  I  think  he  had  a  happy 


142  The  Saturday  Club 

end,  his  illness  was  very  short.  Father  says  he  wanted  he  should 
live  at  least  as  long  as  he  himself  should;  he  was  very  sorry  to  have 
him  die  first.  We  went  with  Mrs.  Agasslz  and  she  said  it  was  the 
greatest  comfort  to  her  to  stand  with  Father  by  that  grave:  'He 
was  one  of  that  group  of  friends,  almost  the  last,  and  he  himself 
was  half  gone  to  heaven.  It  seemed  good  to  her  to  think  that  the 
burial,  and  all  this  side,  was  dim  to  him.'  That  interested  me  very 
much." 

Just  a  month  later  Emerson  died. 

Moore's  tribute  to  Campbell  comes  to  mind  as  fitting  Long- 
fellow:— 

"True  bard  and  simple,  —  as  the  race 
Of  heaven-born  poets  always  are, 
When  stooping  from  their  starry  place, 
They're  children  near,  but  gods  afar." 

E.  W.  E. 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

Of  the  difficulties  which  beset  the  way  of  the  writers  of  these 
sketches  in  the  cases  of  the  more  eminent  and  the  more  popular 
of  the  subjects,  earlier  mention  has  been  made.  Dr.  Holmes  is 
especially  a  case  in  point;  versatile,  brilliant,  active  through  a  very 
long  life,  the  story  of  which,  fully  and  excellently  told  by  Mr.  John 
Torrey  Morse,  is  well  known.  Hence,  though  that  memoir  will 
be  here  much  quoted,  I,  who  was  one  of  Holmes's  students, 
shall  introduce,  perhaps  in  undue  proportion,  some  personal  rec- 
ollections. 

The  late  Dr.  David  Cheever,  Dr.  Holmes's  accomplished  as- 
sistant at  the  Medical  School,  gave  interesting  memories  of  that 
aspect  of  his  chief  which  I  shall  here  quote,  while  Mrs.  Fields's 
pleasant  words  about  her  next-door  neighbour  and  friend  help  out 
the  sketch  of  this  many-sided  and  lovable  man. 

Since  the  Reverend  Abiel  Holmes  held  so  lightly  the  gift  from 
his  wife  to  him,  and  to  the  world,  of  their  firstborn,  merely  writ- 
ing in  his  journal  of  1809,  under  the  date  of  August  29,  "son  b.," 
it  is  the  more  interesting  to  see  how  strongly  the  youth,  his  merry 
school  and  college  days  past,  felt  his  own  budding  powers.  Once 
in  Paris,  in  the  face  of  the  good  clergyman's  misgivings,  he  urged 
his  right  to  time  and  money  to  make  sure  of  their  best  develop- 
ment. Oliver's  letters,  youthfully  inconsiderate  of  sacrifices  which 
his  education  perhaps  meant  to  his  parents,  show  that  he  saw  that 
Paris  then  was  the  centre  of  a  scientific  practice  hitherto  unknown 
in  medicine,  and  that  he  was  determined  to  gain  all  that  he  could 
of  knowledge,  theoretical  and  practical.  The  eager  student  asks 
his  father,  dubious  about  Paris:  "What  better  can  be  done  with 
money  than  putting  the  means  of  instruction  —  the  certain  power 
of  superiority,  if  not  of  success  —  into  the  hands  of  one's  children.^ 
Besides,  economy,  in  one  sense,  is  too  expensive  for  a  student.  I 
say  freely  that  a  certain  degree  of  ease  connected  with  my  manner 
of  living  —  a  tolerably  good  dinner,  a  nice  book  when  I  want 


144  The  Saturday  Club 

it,  and  that  kind  of  comforts  —  are  in  the  place  of  theatres  and 
parties,  for  which  I  have  less  taste  than  many  good  fellows  of  my 
acquaintance.  .  .  .  Once  for  all,  I  say  that  you  may  trust  me.  .  .  . 
To  conclude,  a  boy  is  worth  his  manure  as  much  as  a  potato  patch, 
and  I  have  said  all  this  because  I  find  it  costs  rather  more  to  do 
things  than  to  talk  about  them." 

Fortunately,  for  the  youth,  it  might  take  his  father's  letters 
six  weeks  to  come,  his  answer  as  long,  and  the  father's  answer  to 
that  as  long.  Also  his  uncle  by  marriage,  Dr.  James  Jackson,  the 
best  physician  in  Boston,  knew  how  invaluable  were  his  oppor- 
tunities. The  great  physician  of  Paris,  Louis,  quickly  recognized 
Holmes's  zeal  and  ability,  and  gave  him  free  access  and  special 
privileges  in  his  hospital  wards,  and  used  his  help  in  the  details 
of  a  work  he  was  preparing  for  publication.  Holmes  succeeded  in 
staying  abroad  for  more  than  two  years,  then  returned,  took  his 
degree  in  Medicine,  joined  the  Massachusetts  Medical  Society, 
and  put  out  his  sign. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  Holmes,  like  Longfellow  and  Lowell, 
under  the  influence  of  the  elders,  on  leaving  college  tried  to  study 
law,  —  what  an  interesting  type  of  lawyer  he  would  have  been,  — 
but  he  quickly  left  that  soil  to  lie  fallow  for  his  son  to  till.  But, 
though  the  priestly  office  was,  in  Holmes's  youth,  inconceivable 
for  him,  any  one  who  will  read  his  letters  to  his  friend,  Mrs.  Har- 
riet Beecher  Stowe,^  in  later  years  will  see  that  he  might  well  have 
replaced  the  preacher  in  many  a  pulpit.  Though  certain  unworthy 
types  of  clergymen  were  objects  of  his  unsparing  attack,  this  doc- 
tor, in  the  end,  reached  the  souls  of  more  hearers  than  his  father 
did  in  the  very  human,  searching,  and  purifying  preaching  in  his 
books. 

The  grafting  of  medicine  on  to  a  Puritan  clerical  stock,  the 
re-potting  into  the  Conservatory  of  Paris,  the  transplantation, 
after  several  years  of  vigorous  culture,  back  to  the  native  soil, 
gave  a  wonderfully  successful  hybrid,  —  a  small,  hardy  peren- 
nial, not  notably  medicinal,  yet  a  good  test  of  medicine,  blossom- 
ing singularly  and  sometimes  beautifully,  and  bearing  sweet, 
wholesome,  and  spicy  fruit. 

*  See  Morse's  Olwer  Wendell  Holmes,  vol.  ii,  pp.  225-55. 


^^^66r€^   ^^c6^i^^!^?ie<f. 


Oliver  TVendell  Holmes  145 

It  turned  out  that  it  was  the  joy  of  the  study,  under  the  lead- 
ing masters  of  medicine  and  surgery  which  were  then  passing  from 
the  empirical  to  the  scientific  stage,  that  had  stirred  his  enthusi- 
asm. However,  he  had  the  honour  and  satisfaction  of  being  one  of 
the  visiting  medical  staff  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital 
for  three  years,  besides  some  private  practice.  Mr.  Morse  in  his 
memoir,  from  which  he  allows  me  to  quote  freely,  says, "  I  have  been 
told  that  he  never  could  become  indifferent  to  the  painful  scenes 
of  the  sick-room,  and  of  course  when  friends  and  neighbours  were 
the  sufferers  he  did  not  find  his  heart  hardened."  Chivalrous  and 
sympathetic  with  regard  to  women,  in  his  books,  he  everywhere 
recognizes  the  delicacy  of  their  organization  and  cautions  the 
coarser  sex  in  the  words  which  the  French  toy-makers  print  on 
the  boxes,  "//  ne  faut  pas  brutaliser  la  machine.''^  He  would  have 
cautioned  the  doctor  or  nurse  dealing  with  the  neurotic  man  or 
hysterical  woman  to  remember  George  Herbert's  ideal  man,  — 

"  Who,  when  he  hath  to  deal 
With  sick  folk,  women,  those  whom  passions  sway, 
Allows  for  that,  and  keeps  his  constant  way; 
Whom  others'  faults  do  not  defeat, 
But,  though  men  fail  him,  yet  his  part  doth  play." 

In  after  life  Holmes  admitted  that  he  did  not  make  any  strenu- 
ous efforts  to  obtain  business.  But  Holmes  had  a  critical  mind. 
Delicate,  scientific  diagnosis  is  one  thing;  what  to  do  about  the 
case  quite  another.  Old-time  multiple  and  drastic  prescriptions 
to  expel  the  disease,  and  bleeding  even  to  a  dangerous  extent  for 
all  fevers,  were  still  expected.  Physiology  was  in  its  infancy, 
as  was  chemistry.  Accurate  study  of  the  action  of  separate  drugs 
on  the  organism  was  hardly  begun.  Dr.  Holmes  would  hardly 
care  to  be  merely,  —  to  use  his  own  words,  — 

"  Planting  little  pills, 
The  seeds  of  certain  annual  fruit 
Well  known  as 'little  bills.'" 

He  was  bright  enough  to  welcome  and  believe  in  Dr.  Jacob 
Bigelow's  startling  paper,  published  about  the  time  of  Holmes's 
return  from  abroad,  maintaining  that  almost  any  disease  was  self- 


14^  The  Saturday  Club 

limited  if  the  patient  had  strength  enough  to  weather,  for  a  week 
or  so,  it,  and  the  mediaeval  medication. 

So,  very  soon,  the  young  man's  instinct  for  writing  and  love  of 
versifying  asserted  themselves.  He  delivered  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Poem  in  1836  at  Harvard,  at  the  time  he  took  his  medical  degree, 
and  actually  sent  forth  his  first  volume  of  poems  before  the  year 
ended.  In  1845,  to  his  great  pleasure,  a  door  opened  letting  him 
out  from  medical  practice,  but  yet  leading  into  a  way,  for  which 
his  faithful  study  had  admirably  fitted  him,  along  which  he  gladly 
travelled  for  thirty-five  years.  This  was  a  professorship,  first  at 
Dartmouth  College  for  two  years,  then  in  the  Harvard  Medical 
school,  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology.  These  were  the  nominal 
subjects,  and  admirably  taught,  until,  in  Physiology,  laboratory 
methods  and  animal  experiment  superseded  didactic  instruction, 
when  this  subject  was  dropped  from  his  teaching;  but,  when  he 
began,  he  was  in  advance  of  almost  any  one  here,  because,  in  Paris, 
he  had  begun  histological  study  with  the  microscope,  and  that 
instrument  remained  through  life  his  favourite  toy.  In  gross  anat- 
omy he  was  a  master  and  interested  his  pupils  as  no  other  could. 

Dr.  David  Cheever,  his  accomplished  prosector,  has  given  this 
admirable  picture  of  the  Professor  at  the  school,  then  and  for 
some  years  later,  in  North  Grove  Street:  — 

"Four  hours  of  busy  dissection  have  unveiled  a  portion  of  the 
human  frame,  insensate  and  stark,  on  the  demonstrating  table. 
Muscles,  nerves,  and  blood  vessels  unfold  themselves  in  unvarying 
harmony,  if  seeming  disorder,  and  the  'subject'  is  nearly  ready 
to  illustrate  the  lecture.  .  .  .  The  winter  light,  snowy  and  dull, 
enters  through  one  tall  window,  bare  of  curtain,  and  falls  upon 
a  lead  floor  .  .  .  and  there  is  naught  to  inspire  the  intellect  or 
the  imagination,  except  the  marvellous  mechanism  of  the  poor 
dead  body.  .  .  . 

"To  such  a  scene  enters  the  poet,  the  writer,  the  wit,  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes.  Few  readers  of  his  prose  or  poetry  could  dream 
of  him  as  here,  in  this  charnel-house,  in  the  presence  of  death. 
The  very  long,  steep,  and  single  flight  of  stairs  leading  up  from 
the  street  below  resounds  with  a  double  and  laboured  tread,  the 
door  opens,  and  a  small,  gentle,  smiling  man  appears,  supported 


Oliver  TVendell  Holmes  147 

by  the  janitor,  who  often  has  been  called  on  to  help  him  up  the 
stairs.  Entering,  and  giving  a  breathless  greeting,  he  sinks  upon  a 
stool  and  strives  to  recover  his  asthmatic  breath.  .  .  .  Anon  re- 
covering, he  brightens  up,  and  asks,  'What  have  you  for  me  to- 
day .f"  and  plunges,  knife  in  hand,  into  the  'depths  of  his  subject,' 
—  a  joke  he  might  have  uttered.  .  .  . 

"Meanwhile  the  Professor  has  been  running  about,  now  as 
nimble  as  a  cat,  selecting  plates,  rummaging  the  dusty  museum 
for  specimens,  arranging  microscopes,  and  displaying  bones.  The 
subject  is  carried  on  a  board  into  the  arena,  decorously  disposed, 
and  is  always  covered,  at  first,  from  curious  eyes,  by  a  clean  white 
sheet.  Respect  for  poor  humanity  and  admiration  for  God's  divin- 
est  work  is  the  first  lesson  and  uppermost  in  the  poet-lecturer's 
mind." 

To  Dr.  Cheever's  memories  I  add  my  own  of  a  few  years  later: — 

Meantime  both  staircases  leading  to  the  anatomical  lecture- 
room  were,  for  twenty  minutes  before  the  lecture,  daily  packed 
with  struggling  youths,  and,  when  the  bolts  were  drawn,  it  was  as 
if  a  dam  had  burst  and  a  torrent  poured  down  the  steep  amphi- 
theatre and  flooded  its  seats.  Such  a  sight  was  seen  at  no  other 
lecture.  It  was  not  only  due  to  Dr.  Holmes's  exact  technical 
knowledge  and  thorough  demonstration  of  the  dissection  of  the 
day,  for  the  idlest  and  rudest  students  eagerly  attended. 

To  his  title  "Professor  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology"  might  well 
have  been  added  "and  the  Humanities."  He  divested  the  cast-off 
human  chrysalis  of  all  gruesome  associations,  treated  it  reverently, 
summoned  to  counsel  the  old  Masters  of  Anatomy,  Albinus  and 
the  rest,  and  its  martyr  too,  Vesalius,  to  praise  the  good  work  of 
his  prosector  and  his  student  assistants.  His  illustrations  were 
poetic,  his  similes  most  fortunate,  and  the  lecture,  though  con- 
versational in  tone,  was  a  rhetorical  masterpiece. 

Then  the  word  passes  among  the  young  barbarians  that  this 
man  has  written  a  book,  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table^ 
which  they  presently  got, "and  read,  and  lent, — very  likely  their 
first  improving  book,  —  a  liberal  education  in  itself,  betraying 
them  by  its  sparkling  shallows  into  deeper  basins  where  per- 


14^  The  Saturday  Club 

chance  they  learned  to  swim,  or  could  flounder  through  till  they 
felt  firm  bottom  again. 

Dr.  Holmes  was  Professor  of  Physiology  too,  the  last  to  teach 
in  the  didactic  way  —  he  welcomed  the  laboratory  method  when 
it  came  in  younger  hands,  always  provided  that  experiments  were 
done  under  anaesthetics.  The  instruction  was  valuable  and  al- 
ways civilizing.  Ancient  and  modern  literature,  mechanics, 
optics  (he  was  one  of  the  first  apostles  here  of  the  microscope 
with  its  beautiful  and  helpful  revelations),  psychology,  behaviour, 
humanity,  and  religion  found  place  in  his  instruction;  yet  he  had 
a  sense  of  proportion  and  subordinated  them. 

No  question  could  remain  in  any  student's  mind  whether  the 
Doctor  loved  his  teaching.  We  could  see  how  he  enjoyed  the  per- 
fect service  of  his  faithful  handmaiden.  Memory,  secure  in  her 
prompting  as  to  the  complicated  branches  of  each  artery  and  the 
wonderful  district-service  of  the  nerves,  and  the  Latin  name  of 
each.  He  never  had  notes  to  help  him.  We  were  narcotized  by 
bad  air,  but  he  made  it  his  business  to  make  learning  so  enter- 
taining, and  startle  flagging  attention  by  some  surprising  remark, 
that  we  could  n't  go  to  sleep. 

The  Doctor's  wit  was  admirable,  and  he  seldom  let  it  run  away 
with  him.  His  singular  skill  in  running  over  the  thin  ice  of  subjects 
not  usually  allowed  in  general  conversation  was  a  temptation  to 
him,  but  he  usually  accomplished  it  brilliantly.  His  literary 
armory  was  full  of  shining  weapons  wrought  by  him  from  physi- 
ological and  even  pathological  material.  May  I  be  pardoned,  for 
its  wit's  sake,  for  recalling  some  of  his  extraordinary  rhetoric  in 
the  lectures.?  What  could  be  happier  as  a  simile  than,  when  enu- 
merating the  advances  of  medical  science,  and  dwelling  on  the  value 
of  pathological  anatomy,  he  admits  that  the  individual  examined 
is  not  benefited  thereby,  adding,  "After  all,  it  is  a  good  deal  like 
inspecting  what  remains  of  the  fireworks  on  the  fifth  of  July." 
When  describing  the  regulation  of  the  circulation  in  the  skin 
through  the  action  of  the  vaso-motor  nerves  on  the  arterioles  in 
sudden  fear,  constricting  them  and  producing  pallor,  or  through 
inhibitory  action,  suddenly  relaxing  and  filling  the  surface  capil- 
laries with  blood  —  he  suddenly  added,  "that  pleasing  phenome- 


Oliver  TVendell  Holmes  1 49 

non  which  some  of  you  may  witness  on  the  cheek  of  that  young 
person  whom  you  expect  to  visit  this  evening."  Alluding  to  the 
shortening  of  the  face  in  age  by  the  loss  of  teeth  and  absorption 
of  the  sockets,  he  said,  "You  have,  no  doubt,  noticed  the  extraor- 
dinary way  in  which  elderly  people  will  suddenly  shut  up  their 
faces  like  an  accordion."  And,  praising  the  modern  dentists  for 
their  skilful  repairing  of  the  ravages  of  time,  he  said,  "Had  your 
art  been  thus  perfected  in  the  last  century,  we  should  not  now  see 
the  Father  of  his  Country,  in  Stuart's  portrait,  his  attention  divided 
between  the  cares  of  the  State  and  the  sustaining  of  his  uppers 
in  position."  His  poems  often  show  what  he  would  have  de- 
lighted to  demonstrate,  how  the  facial  muscles  with  which  we 
laugh  and  cry  lie  side  by  side. 

The  Doctor's  wit  lightened  the  hour,  but  it  fixed  the  point  il- 
lustrated in  the  student's  mind.  But  there  was  another  side.  He 
was  a  Poet-Anatomist,  a  Poet-Physiologist,  and  a  Poet-Micros- 
copist.  To  Dollond's  success  in  making  the  microscope  achro- 
matic the  victories  of  modern  histology  are  due.  Hear  how  the 
Doctor  presents  the  matter:  "Up  to  the  time  of  the  living  gener- 
ation Nature  had  kept  over  all  her  inner  workshops  the  forbid- 
ding inscription  NO  ADMITTANCE.  If  any  prying  observer 
ventured  to  spy  through  his  magnifying  tubes  into  the  mysteries 
of  her  glands  and  canals  and  fluids,  she  covered  up  her  work  in 
blinding  mists  and  bewildering  haloes,  as  the  deities  of  old  con- 
cealed their  favoured  heroes  in  the  moment  of  danger."  See  in 
what  follows  how  even  in  inspection  of  the  organs  of  perished  mor- 
tality, he  makes  a  poem  of  creation  out  of  the  poor  dust:  "Cells 
pave  the  great  highway  of  the  interior  system.  The  Soul  itself 
sits  on  a  throne  of  nucleated  cells,  and  flashes  its  mandates  through 
skeins  of  glassy  filaments  which  once  were  simple  chains  of 
vesicles." 

About  the  time  when  the  Doctor  gave  up  practice,  the  Lyceum 
system,  rapidly  spreading  from  New  England  through  the  land, 
gave  him,  with  his  knowledge,  wit,  and  originality,  ready  and 
secure  opportunity  of  earning  by  lecturing,  but  he  was  too  much 
of  a  "Cit"  to  take  and  enjoy  the  chances  of  an  itinerant  lecturer, 
and  his  real  sufferings  from  asthma  in  a  new  bed  made  him  gladly 


150  The  Saturday  Club 

abandon  this  source  of  revenue.  But  he  enjoyed  composing,  and 
much  more,  delivering  a  poem  on  festive  or  literary  occasions, 
especially  if  there  were  a  chance  for  a  slap,  not  spiteful,  at  the  pro- 
fessions —  for  their  good.  Of  these  occasions  he  said,  "To  write 
a  lyric  is  like  having  a  fit;  you  can't  have  one  when  you  wish  you 
could  (as,  for  instance,  when  your  bore  is  in  his  third  hour  and 
having  it  all  his  own  way),  and  you  can't  help  having  it  when 
it  comes  itself." 

Dr.  Holmes  lived  first  in  Montgomery  Place  (now  Bosworth 
Street) ;  then  in  Charles  Street,  finally  in  a  Beacon  Street  house,  — 

"Such  a  one 
In  yonder  street  which  fronts  the  sun," 

as  the  modest  youth  in  his  humbler  days  had  coveted,  but  with 
the  added  charm  of  a  clear  view  of  the  sunset  sky  beyond,  the 
broad  horizon,  and  the  spires  of  his  native  town.  Thence  he  wrote 
to  Motley:  "We  poor  Bostonians  come  to  think  at  last  that  there 
is  nothing  like  it  in  the  orhs  terrarum.  I  suppose  it  sounds,  to 
one  who  is  away,  like  the  Marchioness  with  her  orange-peel  and 
water."  However,  for  seven  years  he  owned  an  ancestral  place  at 
Pittsfield,  to  which  he  went  in  summer,  but  it  was  too  far  from 
beloved  Boston.  Yet  the  love  for  the  country,  and  knowledge  of 
country  folks  of  various  types,  there  acquired,  were  invaluable 
to  him  for  his  later  writings,  poems  or  prose. 

The  Hub  was  world  enough  for  Holmes,  as  London  was  for 
Johnson,  and  he  did  it  justice,  and  justified  it.  Partly  because  of 
his  utter  love  for  it,  partly  because  of  his  asthma,  he  almost  never 
roamed.  I  think  he  never  saw  nor  had  any  conception  of  the  great 
West  with  its  new  ambitions,  cravings  for  vast  elbow-room,  and 
its  aversion,  having  set  its  hand  to  the  prairie  plough,  to  look  back 
to  the  sweet  associations  of  the  Past. 

Those  not  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Charles,  and  who  find  that 
their  preceding  generations  will  not  fulfil  the  numerical  conditions 
that  the  good  Doctor  requires  for  recognition  as  belonging  to  the 
Brahmin  caste,  may  naturally  chafe  or  laugh  at  his  limitations, 
but,  if  they  read  his  work  through,  they  will  easily  pardon  him, 
^^ because  he  loved  much"  and  learn  to  love  him.   They  may  have 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  151 

heard  the  rumour  that  even  St.  Peter  was  reported  to  have  whis- 
pered to  a  good  Boston  man  as  he  passed  him  through  the  golden 
gates,  "You  won't  like  it." 

Well,  seated  on  the  Hub  then  —  he  might  have  had  a  worse 
chair  —  this  charming  and  frankly  avowed  egotist  —  the  reproach 
of  the  name  being  neutralized  by  the  size  of  his  heart  and  the 
humanity  and  culture  of  his  mind  —  proceeded  on  a  university- 
extension  and  home-culture  plan  as  Autocrat,  Professor,  and  Poet, 
to  ameliorate  the  world.   He  surely  accomplished  much. 

Dr.  Holmes  knew  that  it  was  time  for  him  to  resign  his  place 
at  the  Medical  School  when  the  life  of  a  new  generation  was  be- 
ginning to  transform  it;  yet  opportunities  for  wider  use  had  been 
opened  to  him.  Called  to  help  out  a  literary  venture,  he  created 
here  a  chair  with  thousands  in  America  and  Europe  on  the 
benches.  When  pestered  beyond  his  usual  courteous  tolerance  by 
a  lady  correspondent  from  California,  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "If 
she  does  n't  jump  into  the  Pacific,  I  shall  have  to  leap  into  the 
Atlantic — I  mean  the  original  damp  spot  so  called."  Perhaps 
not  thus  driven,  but  lured  in  by  his  friend  Lowell's  persuasion, 
Dr.  Holmes  soon  found  himself,  indeed,  suddenly  immersed  in 
the  Atlantic  —  the  Monthly  this  time  —  and  no  one  can  doubt 
that  he  enjoyed  it;  and  alike  this  sport  and  his  stout  swimming 
delighted  the  on-looking  multitudes. 

Mr.  Emerson  wrote  in  his  journal  in  1862:  "Holmes  came  out 
late  in  life,  with  a  strong,  sustained  growth  for  two  or  three  years, 
like  old  pear  trees  which  have  done  nothing  for  ten  years,  and  at 
last  begin  and  grow  great."  And  again,  later:  "By  his  perfect  fin- 
ish, cabinet  finish,  gem  finish,  gem  carved  with  a  microscope  or  the 
carver's  eye,  and  which  perfection  appears  in  every  conversation; 
and  in  his  part  in  a  business  debate,  or  at  a  college  dinner-table,  as 
well  as  in  his  songs,  —  he  resembles  Fontenelle,  and  Galiani,  and 
Moore,  though  richer  than  either  of  them.  Wonderful  fertility, 
and  aptness  of  illustration.  He  is  an  Illustrated  Magazine  with 
20,000  accurate  engravings." 

Mr.  Emerson  also  has  preserved  one  of  the  Doctor's  neat 
jokes:  "When  Andrew  P.  Peabody  had  been  president  pro  tern. 
of  the  University  a  long  time,  and  had  been  a  favoured  candidate 


1 5  2  The  Saturday  Club 

for  the  Chair,  and  Hill  was  elected,  Dr.  Holmes  said:  'Szc  vos  non 
vohis  nidificatis  apes.'*  '*  ^ 

Dr.  Holmes's  biographer  thinks  that  his  prizing  the  Club  so 
highly  was  partly  the  result  of  his  limited  sphere  of  life.  Had  he, 
from  wider  travel  and  acquaintance,  become  cosmopolitan,  "the 
Club  would  for  him  have  assumed  proportions  more  accurately 
adapted  to  the  Universe  in  general.  But  in  the  little  narrow  Bos- 
ton routine  these  monthly  gatherings  were  like  nuggets  of  glit- 
tering gold  scattered  in  a  gravel  field." 

A  large  part  of  the  Doctor's  happiness  at  these  dinners  was  his 
enjoyment  of  his  talk  to,  as  well  as  with,  these  former  acquaint- 
ances, now  become  fast  friends. 

In  the  introduction  to  his  A  Mortal  Antipathy,  published  in 
1890,  he  made  the  following  remarkable  statement,  showing  his 
pride  and  faith  in  Boston  with  no  false  modesty,  and  yet,  if  we 
extend  his  date,  as  he  probably  did  unconsciously,  from  1857 
to  1874,  his  boast  might  well  be  admitted.  For  then,  to  the  roll 
of  the  Club  had  been  added  the  names  of  Prescott,  Whittier, 
Hawthorne,  Parkman,  Norton,  and  Howells,  in  pure  letters, 
Sumner  and  Charles  Francis  Adams  as  statesmen  and  scholars, 
and  the  eminent  men  of  science,  pure  or  applied,  Asa  Gray,  Jef- 
fries Wyman,  the  younger  Agassiz,  and  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe.  Holmes 
wrote:  "When,  a  little  while  after  the  establishment  of  the  new 
magazine,  the  'Saturday  Club'  gathered  about  the  long  table  at 
'Parker's,'  such  a  representation  of  all  that  was  best  in  Amer- 
ican literature  had  iiever  been  collected  within  so  small  a  compass. 
Most  of  the  Americans  whom  educated  foreigners  cared  to  see  — 
leaving  out  of  consideration  official  dignitaries  whose  temporary 
importance  makes  them  objects  of  curiosity  —  were  seated  at  that 
board."  When  Holmes  was  told  that  some  outsiders  amused  them- 

^  A  condensation  by  the  Doctor  of  two  verses  in  the  Georgics  of  Virgil  on  the  altruism 
of  creatures:  — 

Sic  vos  non  vobis  melHficatis  apes, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  nidificatis  aves. 

Not  for  yourselves,  O  bees,  you  honey  make,  ^ 

Not  for  yourselves,  birds,  do  you  build  the  nests. 

The  transposition  of  final  words  gives  for  result, 

Not  for  yourself,  A.  P.s,  you  build  a  nest. 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  153 

selves  by  calling  the  Club  "The  Mutual  Admiration  Society," 
"If  there  was  not,"  said  he,  "a  certain  amount  of  'mutual  admira- 
tion '  among  some  of  those  I  have  mentioned,  it  was  a  great  pity, 
and  implied  a  defect  in  the  nature  of  men  who  were  otherwise 
largely  endowed." 

Mr.  Morse  tells  the  unhappy  truth:  "If  Dr.  Holmes's  talk  had 
been  remembered  in  quotable  shape  anywhere,  it  would  have  been 
so  in  Boston,  and  if  there  were  such  reminiscences  here,  I  think 
that  I  should  be  familiar  with  them;  but  I  know  of  nothing  of  the 
sort.  His  talk  is  remembered  as  the  scenery  of  the  clouds  is 
remembered,  a  picture  dwelling  in  the  mind,  but  never  to  be  pro- 
duced to  eyes  which  looked  not  upon  it.  .  .  ."  And  so  it  was  with 
the  others. 

Mr.  James  T.  Fields  was  not  only  Dr.  Holmes's  publisher,  but 
he  and  his  accomplished  and  hospitable  wife  were,  for  years,  his 
close  neighbours.  Mrs.  Fields,  in  the  last  years  of  her  life,  took 
much  interest  in  the  proposed  chronicle  of  the  Club  and  gave  me 
leave  to  draw  freely  upon  her  memories  in  her  journals  and  books. 
She  thus  describes  her  friend:  — 

"Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  ordinary  idea  of  the  roman- 
tic 'man  of  genius'  than  was  his  well-trimmed  little  figure,  and 
nothing  more  surprising  and  delightful  than  the  way  in  which  his 
childlikeness  of  nature  would  break  out  and  assert  itself.  ... 

"Given  a  dinner-table,  with  light  and  colour  and  somebody  oc- 
casionally to  throw  the  ball,  his  spirits  would  rise  and  coruscate 
astonishingly.  He  was  not  unaware  if  men  whom  he  considered  his 
superiors  were  present;  he  was  sure  to  make  them  understand  that 
he  meant  to  sit  at  their  feet  and  listen  to  them,  even  if  his  own 
excitement  ran  away  with  him.  'I've  talked  too  much,' he  often 
said,  with  a  feeling  of  sincere  penitence,  as  he  rose  from  the  table. 
*I  wanted  to  hear  what  our  guest  had  to  say.'  But  the  wise  guest, 
seizing  the  opportunity,  usually  led  Dr.  Holmes  on  until  he  forgot 
that  he  was  not  listening  and  replying.  .  .  . 

"His  reverence  was  one  source  of  its  inspiration,  and  a  desire  to 
do  well  everything  which  he  undertook.  He  was  a  faithful  friend 
and  a  keen  appreciator,  and  he  disliked  to  hear  depreciation  of 
others." 


154  The  Saturday  Club 

Of  the  Doctor  in  his  writings  his  own  words  may  well  be  quoted. 
He  is 

"A  Boswell,  writing  out  himself; 
For  though  he  changes  dress  and  name, 
The  man  beneath  is  still  the  same, 
Laughing  or  sad,  by  fits  and  starts. 
One  actor  in  a  dozen  parts; 
And  whatsoe'er  the  mask  may  be, 
The  voice  assures  us,  This  is  he." 

Of  course  there  was  egotism;  he  always  admitted  it  freely,  but  it 
was  childlike,  pleasant  and  also  scientific. 

Mrs.  Fields  said  that  there  was  nothing  left  to  say  of  him  which 
he  did  not  cheerfully  and  truthfully  say  of  himself.  "  I  am  intensely 
interested  in  my  own  personality,"  he  began,  one  day;  "but  we 
are  all  interesting  to  ourselves,  or  ought  to  be.  I  know  I  am,  and 
I  see  why.  We  take,  as  it  were,  a  mould  of  our  own  thought.  Now, 
let  us  compare  it  with  the  mould  of  another  man  on  the  same  sub- 
ject. His  mould  is  either  too  large  or  too  small,  or  the  veins  and 
reticulations  are  altogether  different.  No  one  mould  fits  another 
man's  thought.  It  is  our  own,  and  as  such,  has  especial  interest 
and  value." 

"Talk,"  said  he  to  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  "is  to  me  only  spading 
up  the  ground  for  new  crops  of  thought."  When  opening  conver- 
sation with  another  his  look  of  expectation  of  something  good  was 
in  itself  a  compliment,  but  hard  to  live  up  to. 

The  Doctor  was  courteous  in  conversation,  but  Wit,  at  his 
elbow,  often  sorely  tempted  him  in  speech  or  in  writing  not  to 
miss  a  happy  opening.  His  friend  said,  "His  sole  aim  was  to  hit 
the  mark  if  possible,  but,  if  a  shot  hit  a  head  also,  he  showed  a 
childlike  pride  in  the  achievement." 

He  left  the  practice  of  medicine  early  because  as  yet  it  was  too 
unscientific,  and  he  did  not  like  to  earn  money  by  it.  Writing  in 
other  sorts  drew  him  strongly.  But  he  had  one  great  fitness  for 
the  profession,  his  humanity.  That  basal  principle  of  a  doctor's 
work,  in  spite  of  his  playful  —  and  helpful  —  banter,  made  him 
more  respectful  to  that  than  to  the  other  "learned  professions." 
Reverence  and  religion  were  never  absent  from  his  nature.  Yet,  as 


Oliver  TVendell  Holmes  1 5  5 

he  did  not  spare  his  own  profession,  so  he  allowed  no  "benefit  of 
clergy"  to  shield  the  Doctor  of  the  Soul  from  his  formidable  wit 
or  wrath,  if  in  intelligence  or  virtue  he  did  shame  to  his  cloth.  His 
delightful  simile  of  the  spirited  persecution  by  the  little  king- 
bird of  the  black-robed  crow  well  describes  his  own  course.  Es- 
pecially did  he  deride  the  violent  and  vain  struggle  of  the  narrow 
clergy  to  blind  themselves  and  their  flocks  against  the  light  of 
science.   What  could  be  neater  than  this  parable.?  — 

"As  feeble  seabirds,  blinded  by  the  storms, 
On  some  tall  lighthouse  dash  their  little  forms, 
And  the  rude  granite  smashes  for  their  pains, 
Those  small  deposits  that  were  meant  for  brains, 
Yet  the  proud  fabric  in  the  morning  sun 
Stands  all  unconscious  of  the  mischief  done, 
Gleams  from  afar,  all  heedless  of  the  fleet 
Of  gulls  and  boobies  brainless  at  its  feet. 
I  tell  their  fate,  yet  courtesy  disclaims 
To  call  mankind  by  such  ungentle  names; 
Yet  when  to  emulate  their  course  ye  dare 
Think  of  their  doom,  ye  simple,  and  beware  T^ 

I  think  it  was  in  connection  with  the  shock  that  the  clergy 
experienced  when  Darwin's  doctrine  of  Evolution  was  first  an- 
nounced that  Dr.  Holmes  most  happily  utilized  the  story,  told  in 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  of  the  letting  down  from  heaven  before 
the  startled  Peter,  in  a  vision,  a  sheet  gathered  at  the  corners, 
in  which  he  saw  beasts  of  all  kinds,  clean  and  unclean,  and  the  Di- 
vine bidding  came,  "Kill  and  eat."  The  shocked  apostle  drew 
back  exclaiming,  "Not  so.  Lord,  for  nothing  common  or  unclean 
hath  at  any  time  entered  into  my  mouth."  But  the  voice  of  the 
great  Lawgiver  came,  sternly  superseding  the  Mosaic  law,  — 
"What  God  hath  cleansed,  that  call  not  thou  common." 

A  close  friendship  existed  between  Dr.  Holmes  and  Mrs.  Har- 
riet Beecher  Stowe  in  the  latter  part  of  their  lives.  The  cruel  man- 
made  dogmas  in  which  both  had  been  brought  up,  and  the  ques- 
tion of  Sin,  exercised  them  through  life.  Dr.  Holmes  wrote  to 
her,  "  I  do  not  believe  that  you  or  I  can  ever  get  the  iron  of  Calvin- 
ism out  of  our  souls."  It  seems,  from  the  letters,  to  have  rankled 
most  in  Mrs.  Stowe.    The  Doctor  found  in  anatomy,  physiology, 


15^  The  Saturday  Club 

and  surgery  everywhere  evidence  of  beneficent  wisdom,  and  yet 
some  terrors  from  his  childhood  seem  to  have  lurked  in  him. 
He  wrote:  "My  creed  is  to  be  found  in  the  first  two  words  of  the 
Pater  Noster.  I  know  there  is  a  great  deal  to  shake  it  in  the  natu- 
ral order  of  things.  .  .  .  But  I  see  no  corner  of  the  Universe  which 
the  Father  has  wholly  deserted.  The  forces  of  Nature  bruise  and 
wound  our  bodies,  but  an  artery  no  sooner  bleeds  than  the  Divine 
hand  is  placed  upon  it  to  stay  the  flow.  .  .  .  We  cannot  conceive  of 
a  Father's  allowing  so  limited  a  being  as  his  human  child  to  ut- 
terly ruin  himself."  He  postulates  that  "the  Deity  must  be  at 
least  as  good  as  the  best  conscious  being  that  he  makes,"  and 
shows  the  blasphemy  of  "supposing  this  world  a  mere  trap,  baited 
with  temptations  of  sense  which  only  Divine  ingenuity  could  have 
imagined,"  to  catch  for  endless  torture  most  of  the  race,  and 
especially  the  hopelessly  ignorant  with  no  wholesome  opportuni- 
ties. 

Dr.  Holmes  recognized  that  a  large  part  of  the  criminals 
punished,  through  all  the  ages,  were  "defectives,"  whose  misdeeds 
were  automatic,  long  before  this  fact  was  generally  recognized  by 
physicians,  or  at  all  in  courts  of  justice.  He  humanely  urged  its 
■consideration,  in  his  stories,  and,  later,  in  the  Atlantic  (April, 
1875)  in  a  paper  called  "Moral  Automatism." 

I  quote  from  an  article  in  the  London  Quarterly  Review  the  fol- 
lowing: "He  was  well  described  by  Miss  Mitford  In  185 1  as  a  small, 
compact,  little  man,  the  delight  and  ornament  of  every  society  he 
enters,  buzzing  about  like  a  bee,  or  fluttering  like  a  humming- 
bird, exceedingly  difficult  to  catch  unless  he  be  really  wanted  for 
some  kind  act,  and  then  you  are  sure  of  him." 

Dr.  Holmes  was,  of  course,  sorry  that  he  was  not  beautiful. 
In  sending  his  photograph  to  a  lady  who  had  asked  for  it,  he  wrote, 
"Nature  did  not  ask  my  advice  about  my  features,  and  I  take 
what  was  given  me  and  am  glad  It  is  no  worse."  And  to  another, 
"The  photograph  is  a  fair  portrait  enough;  but  I  do  not  think 
my  face  is  a  flattering  likeness  of  myself.  ...  I  have  always  con- 
sidered my  face  a  convenience  rather  than  an  ornament." 

Of  her  neighbour  Mrs.  Fields  says,  "Conventionalities  had  a 
strong  hold  upon  him . . ."  although  Dr.  Holmes's  conventions 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  157 

were  more  easily  shuffled  off  than  a  casual  observer  would  be- 
lieve. 

It  has  been  said  by  a  friend  that  he  was  not  altruistic.  True,  but 
in  his  own  way  he  was  an  active  helper  of  mankind,  civilizing, 
then  advancing  the  knowledge,  of  hearers  and  readers,  in  a  bril- 
liant, cheery  way  —  making  them  remember. 

But  one  great  service  must  by  no  means  be  forgotten.  How  many 
a  young  mother  has  been  saved  to  her  husband  and  children  be- 
cause of  the  courage,  the  determination,  and  ability  with  which 
the  young  Dr.  Holmes  insisted,  in  the  face  of  fierce  opposition  by 
the  learned  doctors  and  eminent  professors,  that  the  deadly  poison 
of  child-bed  fever  can  be  carried  by  the  physician  to  new  cases. 
His  opponents,  two  leading  obstetricians  of  the  country,  attacked 
the  young  doctor  with  blind  abuse.  He  quietly  republished  his 
article,  asking  that  the  case  be  temperately  and  scientifically  con- 
sidered. He  said :  "  I  take  no  offence,  and  attempt  no  retort.  No 
man  makes  a  quarrel  with  me  over  the  counterpane  that  covers 
a  mother,  with  her  new-born  infant  at  her  breast.  There  is  no 
epithet  in  the  vocabulary  of  slight  and  sarcasm  that  can  reach 
my  personal  sensibilities  in  such  a  controversy.  .  .  .  Let  it  be 
remembered  that  persons  are  nothing  in  this  matter;  better  that 
twenty  pamphleteers  should  be  silenced,  or  as  many  professors 
unseated,  than  that  one  mother's  life  should  be  taken." 

Dr.  Holmes  bore  with  courage  and  sweetness  the  successive 
bereavements  which  befel  him  in  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  — 
—  his  younger  son,  his  wife,  and  his  only  daughter.  Meantime 
with  manly  patience  and  even  an  outward  cheerful  bearing,  he 
suffered  from  increasing  weakness  and  difficulty  of  breathing. 
Yet  he  received  and  even  invited  to  walk  with  him  the  many 
friends  who  gladly  came  to  him  at  Boston  or  Beverly  Farms.  He 
watched  his  growing  old  with  a  half-humorous  physiological  in- 
terest. Death  came  to  him  with  little  distress,  sitting  in  his 
chair. 

Mr.  Morse  quotes  his  pleasant  words,  most  fitting  to  end  this 
sketch: — 

"  I  have  told  my  story.  I  do  not  know  what  special  gifts  have 
been  granted  or  denied  me;  but  this  I  know,  that  I  am  like  so 


158  'The  Saturday  Club 

many  others  of  my  fellow-creatures,  that  when  I  smile,  I  feel  as 
if  they  must;  when  I  cry,  I  think  their  eyes  fill;  and  it  always 
seems  to  me  that  when  I  am  most  truly  myself  I  come  nearest 
to  them,  and  am  surest  of  being  listened  to  by  the  brothers  and 
sisters  of  the  larger  family  into  which  I  was  born  so  long  ago." 

E.  W.  E. 


CORNELIUS  CONWAY  FELTON 

Felton,  the  future  scholar,  varied  writer,  professor,  and  finally 
President  of  Harvard  University,  was  born  at  Newbury,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1807,  the  same  year  with  Agassiz  and  Longfellow. 
His  parents,  quiet  New  England  country-folk,  must  have  seen 
that  they  had  a  boy  worth  educating.  ! 

A  friend  of  Felton's  wrote  that  Mr.  Simeon  Putnam,  of  North 
Andover,  who  prepared  young  Felton  for  college  at  his  private 
school,  awakened  in  him  such  an  enthusiasm  for  classical  study 
that  before  going  to  college  he  had  read  Sallust,  Virgil,  Cicero's 
Orations,  each  several  times;  that  he  could  repeat  much  of  the 
poetry  of  the  Graecia  Minora  from  memory;  also  had  read  all  of 
Tacitus  and  large  portions  of  Xenophon  and  the  Iliad,  and  the 
Greek  Testament  four  times.  More  astonishing  yet,  he  also 
brought  with  him  to  college  a  translation  of  the  whole  of  Grotius's 
De  Veritate.  He  suffered  the  penalty  for  this  overwork  for  years,  and 
yet  he  did  extra  work  in  college  on  Hebrew  and  the  modern  lan- 
guages, and  largely  supported  himself  by  teaching.  He  is  said  to 
have  been  a  rather  rough  boy  when  he  came  to  college,  but  to 
have  smoothed  off  rapidly.  He  taught  for  a  time  in  Mr.  Cogswell's 
admirable  Round  Hill  School  at  Northampton.  Forbes  and  Ap- 
pleton,  some  four  years  younger  than  Felton,  were  scholars  there. 

Though  a  wonderful  scholar,  zealous  and  enthusiastic,  he  lacked 
the  faculty  of  arousing  these  qualities  in  unregenerate  sophomores 
or  lazy  juniors.  He  was  unsympathetic,  and,  unlike  Mr.  Gurney, 
too  readily  reacted  to  their  "natural  enemies"  theory,  the  curse 
of  colleges.  Yet  one  of  his  younger  Cambridge  neighbours  says 
that  his  knowledge  and  enthusiasm  made  him.  In  Europe,  a  de- 
lightful travelling  companion,  knowing  everything  interesting 
about  places,  their  history,  and  also  their  legends.  A  friend  said 
that  he  especially  cared  to  study  the  Greek  mind  and  life  in  the 
best  period.  "To  him,  therefore,  the  life  of  Greece  consisted,  not 
solely  in  its  great  men,  but  in  the  euphonies  of  its  words  and  in 
the  rhythm  of  its  periods,  .  .  .  and  those  works  of  its  sculptors 


i6o  ^he  Saturday  Club 

and  founders  which  immortalized  over  again  the  materials  of  a 
literature  already  immortal." 

Felton  was  a  large,  burly  man  with  a  head  of  unusual  size,  a 
short  neck  and  a  dark,  rubicund  complexion,  the  type  that  used  to 
be  called  apoplectic.  He  was  impulsive,  easily  moved,  though 
genial.  His  head  was  further  magnified  by  a  mass  of  curly  black 
hair. 

The  Mutual  Admiration  gathering  of  young  Felton  and  his 
early  friends  in  Cambridge  has  been  told  of  in  the  sketch  of  Long- 
fellow. In  the  stormy  political  issues  that  soon  arose,  Hlllard, 
Cleveland,  and  Felton  were  more  conservative;  then  Longfellow 
parted  from  them  on  the  moral  issues.  Felton  was  a  frequent 
contributor  to  the  North  American  Review.  He  backed  Longfellow 
against  the  defamations  of  Poe.  Longfellow  had  translated  a  ballad 
that  he  found  in  German  into  English.  Poe  recognized  in  it  the 
Scotch  ballad  "Bonnie  George  Campbell."  It  seems  that  a  Ger- 
man had  translated  it  and  Longfellow  innocently  translated  it  back, 
not  knowing  the  original.  Poe  publicly  charged  him  with  fraud. 

Felton  was  most  agreeable  and  fresh-spirited  with  every  one  he 
met.  He  had  a  cordial,  delightful  laugh.  In  one  of  Lowell's  essays 
on  Cambridge  in  old  times,  he  described  Felton  telling  a  good 
story,  "  his  great  laugh  expected  all  the  while  from  deep  vaults  of 
chest,  and  then  coming  in  at  the  close,  hearty,  contagious,  mount- 
ing with  the  measured  tread  of  a  jovial  butler  who  brings  anclent- 
est  good-fellowship  from  exhaustless  bins,  and  enough,  without 
other  sauce,  to  give  a  flavour  of  stalled  ox  to  a  dinner  of  herbs." 

Francis  H.  Underwood  writes  thus  pleasantly  of  the  Profes- 
sor's redeeming  breadth  and  mellowness:  "The  exclusive  pursuit 
of  scholastic  and  scientific  studies  is  often  a  desiccating  process; 
and  the  man  who  can  toss  the  moons  of  Saturn  for  their  avoirdu- 
pois, or  discourse  on  the  Kritik  of  Kant,  or  annotate  the  Clouds 
of  Aristophanes,  is  often  only  an  intellectual  machine.  He  may 
be  the  more  perfect  machine  for  his  self-denial,  but  he  is  so  much 
the  less  a  well-developed  man.  Felton  was  one  who  toiled  furi- 
ously and  long,  and  then,  when  the  time  came,  was  a  genial  and 
cloud-dispelling  talker,  accompanying  the  wisdom  or  wit  of  the 
company  with  a  merriment  fit  for  Olympus  on  a  holiday." 


/t^% 


Cornelius  Conway  Felton         1 6 1 

Here  also  is  a  pleasant  testimony  from  England.  John  Forster 
wrote  to  Longfellow  in  1843:  "Howl  envy  you  the  intercourse 
with  Felton!  What  a  creature  to  love  he  is.  How  justly,  and  with 
what  heart,  he  writes!" 

Felton's  industry  was  great,  and  much  of  it,  we  must  think, 
on  things  which  he  was  drawn  to,  and  so,  as  William  Morris  said 
good  work  should  become,  a  joy  to  the  maker  as  well  as  to  him 
into  whose  hand  it  falls.  Here  is  a  case  in  point.  Few  boys  are 
drawn  to  Greek  in  college.  There  are  other  reasons,  but  here  is 
certainly  one:  The  preparatory  study  for  the  last  fifty  years  has 
been  the  Anabasis  and  the  firs  t  three  books  of  the  Iliad.  For  twenty 
years  before,  boys  prepared  on  a  varied  and  charming  selection 
made  by  Felton  from  .^sop,  Lucian,  chapters  from  Xenophon, 
especially  the  highly  interesting  Cyropsedia,  a  book  of  Herodotus, 
a  bit  of  Thucydides,  odes  of  Anacreon,  an  extract  from  each  of  the 
three  great  tragedians,  an  episode  from  the  Odyssey,  an  ode  of 
Sappho  and  of  Simonides,  and,  last,  the  beautiful  Epitaph  on 
Bion  by  Moschus.  A  boy  with  any  literary  response  could,  thus 
prepared,  hardly  fail  to  remember  things  in  this  book  with  pleas- 
ure and  take  some  interest  in  the  Greeks,  their  art,  their  language, 
and  their  country.  The  present  writer,  no  scholar,  here  renders 
thanks  for  the  good  and  lasting  gifts  of  Cornelius  Felton  to  him 
in  that  work. 

The  Professor's  tastes  and  gifts  led  him  to  work  in  manifold 
directions.  Mr.  Underwood  said,  "His  heart  was  always  divided 
between  his  beloved  Greeks  and  the  men  who  were  carrying  on 
the  literary  work  of  the  day."  He  enjoyed  helping  Longfellow, 
translating  some  of  the  poetry,  old  or  modern,  for  his  collection, 
The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Europe.  Each  year  he  worked  upon  and 
often  issued  some  edition  of  a  classic  author,  translated  some  im- 
portant work,  like  Menzel's  German  Literature,  or  wrote  for  some 
encyclopaedia.  He  was  a  frequent  contributor  to  the  North  Amer- 
ican Review.  In  1848,  Guyot  came  to  Boston  to  lecture,  and 
for  two  years  made  his  home  in  Cambridge  near  Agassiz,  his 
friend.    Felton  translated  Guyot's  Earth  and  Man  into  English. 

At  last  Felton  had  the  joy  of  visiting  Europe.  He  sailed  in  1853 
and  stayed  abroad  more  than  a  year,  giving  half  his  time  to 


1 62  ^he  Saturday  Club 

Greece,  there  seeing  at  last  the  gleaming  marble  of  the  Acropolis 
among  its  flowers,  between  stately  Lycabettus  and  the  storied 
vEgean.  Once  again  he  went  thither,  but  that  was  when  his  health 
and  strength  were  failing.  When  Dr.  Howe  returned  from  Crete 
in  1 867  he  told  Dana  that  Byron  and  Felton  were  idolized  among 
the  Greeks. 

The  year  after  Felton's  first  return  he  was  included  in  the 
forming  Club,  brought  in,  of  course,  by  his  neighbour  Agassiz  — 
they  had  now  the  bond  of  having  married  sisters  —  and  Longfel- 
low and  Lowell,  who  knew  his  social  qualities  as  well  as  his 
varied  gifts.  Of  the  original  fourteen  of  the  Club,  probably  all 
were  opposed  to  slavery  except  Peirce  and  Felton.  The  as- 
tronomer was  bound  to  the  South  by  strong  friendships,  and  the 
scholar,  though  praising  the  Greeks  in  their  struggle  for  liberty, 
was  actively  hostile  to  an  agitation  to  free  negroes  which  might 
endanger  the  peace  and  union  of  the  States.  Hence  a  coolness  had 
sprung  up  between  him  and  Abolitionists,  especially  Howe  and 
Sumner,  once  his  close  friends.  In  the  Kansas  agitation  Long- 
fellow wrote:  "Felton  is  quite  irritated  with  Sumner  about  poli- 
tics. I  hope  it  will  not  end  in  an  open  rupture;  but  I  much  fear 
it  will."  But  his  eyes  were  opened  by  the  march  of  events,  and 
in  March,  1856,  just  after  the  dastardly,  murderous  assault  on 
Sumner  sitting  In  his  desk  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  Longfellow 
writes,  —  "At  dinner,  —  let  me  record  it  to  his  honour,  —  Felton, 
who  has  had  a  long  quarrel  with  Sumner,  proposed  as  a  toast, 
*the  reelection  of  Charles  Sumner.'"  This  toast  may  have  been 
at  the  Club  dinner  and  must  have  been  a  great  relief  to  rather 
strained  relations. 

Senator  George  F.  Hoar,  in  his  account  of  Harvard  Sixty  Years 
Ago,  thus  speaks  of  Felton  in  somewhat  superlative  fashion:  "The 
Greek  Professor  was  the  heartiest  and  jolllest  of  men.  He  was  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  best  examples  of  a  fully  rounded  scholarship 
which  this  country  or,  perhaps,  any  country  ever  produced.  He 
gave,  before  the  Lowell  Institute,  a  course  of  lectures  on  'Greece, 
Ancient  and  Modern,'  into  which  is  compressed  learning  enough 
to  fill  a  large  encyclopaedia.  .  .  .  Professor  Felton  was  a  very  im- 
pulsive man,  though  of  great  dignity  and  propriety  in  his  general 


Cornelius  Conway  Felton  163 

bearing."  The  Senator  illustrates  these  qualities,  and  also  the 
Professor's  love  for  the  purest  English,  in  the  following  reminis- 
cence: His  brother,  John  Brooks  Felton,  twenty  years  younger 
than  he,  was  the  most  brilliant  scholar  in  his  class.  Just  before 
his  graduation  he  was  reported  to  the  Faculty  for  the  offence  of 
swearing  in  the  college  yard.  The  usual  punishment  then  was  a 
"public  admonition"  and  this  involved  further  a  deduction  of 
sixty-four  scholarship  marks,  also  a  letter  to  the  parent.  But  the 
Faculty  were  merciful  in  this  case  and  ordained  that  Professor 
Felton  should  admonish  his  brother  in  private.  Cornelius  was  re- 
spected by  the  young  sinner  rather  as  a  father  than  a  brother.  He 
sent  for  John  and  thus  began:  "'  I  cannot  tell  you  how  mortified 
I  am  that  my  brother,  in  whose  character  and  scholarship  I  had 
taken  so  much  pride,  should  have  been  reported  to  the  Faculty 
for  this  vulgar  and  wicked  offence.'  The  contrite  John  said,  *I 
am  exceedingly  sorry.  It  was  under  circumstances  of  great  prov- 
ocation. I  have  never  been  guilty  of  such  a  thing  before  and 
have  never  in  my  life  been  addicted  to  profanity.'  'Damnation! 
John,'  broke  in  the  Professor, '  how  often  have  I  told  you  the  word 
is  profaneness^  and  not  profanity!'" 

I  quote  from  the  journal  of  Longfellow  an  instance  of  Felton's 
as  well  as  Lowell's,  wit  at  a  dinner  where  were  present  six  members 
of  the  Club-to-be  three  years  later:  "January  5th,  1853.  Lowell 
gave  a  supper  to  Thackeray.  The  other  guests  were  Felton,  Clough,  ^ 
Dana,  Dr.  Parsons,  Fields,  Edmund  Quincy,  Estes  Howe,  and  my- 
self. We  sat  down  at  ten  and  did  not  leave  the  table  till  one.  Very 
gay,  with  stories  and  jokes.  'Will  you  take  some  port.^"  said 
Lowell  to  Thackeray.  'I  dare  drink  anything  that  becomes  a 
man,'  answered  the  guest.  *It  will  be  a  long  while  before  that 
becomes  a  man,'  said  Lowell.  'Oh,  no,'  cried  Felton,  'it  is  fast 
turning  into  one.'  As  we  were  going  away  Thackeray  said,  'We 
have  stayed  too  long.'  '  I  should  say,'  replied  the  host,  'one  long 
and  too  short,  —  a  dactylic  supper.' " 

In  i860,  when  Dr.  Walker  resigned  the  presidency  of  Harvard 
University,  Professor  Felton  was  chosen  as  his  successor.  This 
was  through  the  urgency  and  influence  of  Agassiz  and  Peirce,  who 

^  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  the  English  scholar  and  poet. 


1^4  "The  Saturday  Club 

were  eager  that  the  college  should  really  be  broadened  into  a 
university  worthy  of  the  name,  and  the  uniform  undergraduate 
classical  and  mathematical  departments  should  not  be  all  in  all, 
and  that  the  Schools,  Scientific  and  Medical,  should  have  their 
due  rank  and  importance.  Felton  was  their  friend,  and  no  doubt 
under  their  influence.  But  such  changes  could  not  be  rapidly  made. 
The  governing  body  and  the  influential  Alumni  must  first  be  con- 
verted. 

President  Felton  was  already  a  sick  man  with  but  two  years  of 
life  before  him.  In  these  no  great  change  appeared  in  the  college 
policy.  President  Eliot,  then  one  of  the  younger  professors,  speaks 
of  President  Felton  as  very  pleasant  and  social.  After  Faculty 
meetings  he  liked  to  have  a  little  simple  supper  for  his  special 
friends  among  the  members,  at  his  house,  close  by,  and  so  was  in 
a  hurry  to  adjourn  the  meeting  and  get  to  it. 

The  following  extracts  are  from  Longfellow's  journal  in  1862:  — 

"February  27th.  My  birthday.  Translated  Canto  xxiii  of 
Paradiso.  News  comes  of  Felton's  death  at  his  brother's,  in  Ches- 
ter, near  Philadelphia.  I  go  down  to  see  Agassiz,  and  find  him  in 
great  distress.    Dear,  good  Felton!  how  much  he  is  beloved!" 

"March  4th.  A  cheerless,  gray  March  day,  —  the  streets 
flooded  with  snow  and  water.  Felton's  funeral,  from  the  College 
chapel.  So  passes  away  the  learned  scholar,  the  genial  companion, 
the  affectionate,  faithful  friend!" 

"March  26th.  Meet  Sophocles  in  the  Street.  He  has  written 
an  epitaph  in  Greek  for  Felton's  gravestone,  which  he  wishes  me 
to  translate.  A  strange,  eccentric  man  is  Sophocles,  with  his  blue 
cloak  and  wild  gray  beard,  his  learning  and  his  silence.  He  makes 
Diogenes  a  possibility.  .  .  . 

"I  send  you  a  literal  translation;  like  the  original,  it  is  in  the 
elegiac,  or  hexameter  and  pentameter  metre:  — 

'Felton,  dearest  of  friends,  to  the  land  unseen  thou  departest; 
Snatched  away,  thou  hast  left  sorrow  and  sighing  behind! 
On  thy  companions,  the  dear  ones,  alas!  the  affliction  has  fallen. 
Hellas,  of  thee  beloved,  misses  thy  beautiful  life!'" 

April  28,  Longfellow  writes  to  a  friend:  "I  can  hardly  tell  you 
how  changed  Cambridge  has  become  to  me.   Felton,  too,  is  gone; 


Cornelius  Conway  Felt  on         165 

one  of  my  oldest  and  dearest  friends.  It  seems,  indeed,  as  if  the 
world  were  reeling  and  sinking  under  my  feet.  He  died  of  heart 
disease,  and  is  buried  here  at  Mount  Auburn,  the  crests  of  whose 
trees  I  can  see  from  this  window  where  I  write.  A  truly  noble, 
sweet  nature!" 

Lowell,  lonely  in  Europe,  in  1873  wrote  home  in  verse  his  vision 
of  the  Club  as  he  fondly  recalled  it,  the  poem  being  mainly  a 
memory  of  Agassiz,  of  whose  death  he  had  just  heard.  This  is 
given  in  its  proper  place,  but  Agassiz's  friend  and  brother-in-law, 
Felton,  is  also  thus  remembered:  — 

"He  too  is  there, 
After  the  good  centurion  fitly  named, 
Whom  learning  dulled  not,  nor  convention  tamed, 
Shaking  with  burly  mirth  his  hyacinthine  hair. 
Our  hearty  Grecian  of  Homeric  ways 
Still  found  the  surer  friend  where  least  he  hoped  the  praise!" 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  V 

1858 

That  makes  the  good  and  bad  of  manners,  namely,  what  helps  or  hinders  fellow- 
ship. For  fashion  is  not  good  sense  absolute,  but  relative;  not  good  sense  private, 
but  good  sense  entertaining  company.  It  hates  corners  and  sharp  points  of  charac- 
ter, hates  quarrelsome,  egotistical,  solitary,  and  gloomy  people;  hates  whatever  can 
interfere  with  total  blending  of  parties;  whilst  it  values  all  peculiarities  as  in  the 
highest  degree  refreshing  which  can  consist  with  good  fellowship.  And  besides  the 
general  infusion  of  wit  to  heighten  civility,  the  direct  splendour  of  intellectual  power 
is  ever  welcome  in  fine  society  as  the  costliest  addition  to  its  rule  and  its  credit. 

Emerson 

IN  Mr.  Emerson's  journal  of  1836  he  says,  "In  our  Club  we  pro- 
posed that  the  rule  of  admission  should  be  this ;  whoever  by  his 
admission  excludes  any  topic  from  our  debate  shall  be  excluded."  ^ 

The  Saturday  Club  seems  to  have  had  the  instinct  that  the 
membership  of  aggressive  reformers,  however  much  they  might  be 
worthy  of  respect  and  praise,  would  be  destructive  to  its  happy 
organization.  Whittier  said  to  Fields  one  day  that  he  was 
"troubled  about  Wendell  Phillips:  he  is  a  hard  man.  It  is  the 
Calvinist  in  him."  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  —  but  he  was  also  a  brilliant 
doer  —  and  James  Freeman  Clarke,  who  was  sweet-tempered, 
and  Edmund  Quincy,  who  had  a  lively  sense  of  humour,  were 
comfortable  reformers  among  the  membership,  never  complained 
of  for  untimely  zeal,  except  that  Mr.  Norton  chafed  a  little  at 
Clarke's  unshakeable  optimism.  Sumner,  living  in  Washington, 
was  not  included  in  the  first  group.  Early  in  the  war,  the  Club 
wished  to  do  him  honour  for  his  noble  struggle,  then  renewed, 
in  a  cause  for  which  he  had  undergone  a  long  martyrdom.  Because 
of  its  enduring  effects  very  possibly,  and  a  continued  life  of  strug- 
gle, into  which  he  put  his  whole  soul,  he  became  less  fitted  for  easy 
social  intercourse  and  seems  to  have  been  sometimes  a  trying 
convive  on  the  rather  rare  occasions  when  he  came  to  the  dinners. 

Our  printed  list  of  members,  given  to  each  on  joining,  shows  in 

^  The  club  referred  to  was  The  Symposium. 


1858  1 67 

one  group  the  Fourteen  who  gathered  in  the  first  two  years,  and, 
under  the  heading,  "Members  Elected  since  1857,"  gives  names 
and  dates  in  due  sequence.  But  Mr.  Norton,  who  was  taken  into 
the  Club  in  i860,  led  the  writer  to  believe  that  formal  balloting 
and  by-laws  did  not  come  into  use  so  early  as  our  printed  official 
list  would  indicate;  records  not  for  many  years  later.  However, 
William  H.  Prescott  and  Whittier  were,  very  likely  informally, 
asked  to  join  the  fellowship  in  1858.  Sketches  of  these  remarkable 
men  follow  this  chapter.  The  sickness  and  death  of  Prescott 
prevented  his  ever  appearing,  if  Mr.  Norton's  memory  was  cor- 
rect. Whittier,  valiant  fighter  as  he  had  been  in  the  political 
arena,  had  a  rustic  shyness,  felt  uncomfortable  away  from  home, 
and  perhaps  shrank  in  an  almost  maidenly  manner  from  anything 
approaching  conviviality.  But  one  object  of  this  fellowship  was 
exactly  this,  to  draw  from  their  retreats  in  the  bushes,  pastures, 
and  woods  their  genii  loci,  Whittier  was  persuaded  to  be  counted 
a  member  of  the  fellowship,  and,  in  the  next  year,  Hawthorne. 

In  his  memoir  of  Dr.  Holmes,  Mr.  John  Torrey  Morse  reminds 
us  that  in  January  of  this  year,  in  the  fourth  paper  of  the  Auto- 
crat in  the  Atlantic^  Holmes  gave  to  the  world  his  "Chambered 
Nautilus,"  and  that  Whittier  said,  as  he  laid  it  down,  "Booked 
for  Immortality."  Up  to  this  time  the  Doctor,  with  his  few  am- 
bitious attempts,  had  been  valued  more  for  his  ever  ready  vers  de 
societe,  amusing,  though  sometimes  unexpectedly  moistening  the 
eyes.    His  biographer  says:  — 

"Dr.  Holmes  himself  was  more  ambitious  to  be  thought  a  poet 
than  anything  else.  The  fascination  of  that  word  of  charm  had 
bewitched  him  as  it  has  so  many  others.  It  implied  genius,  in- 
spiration, a  spark  of  the  divine  fire.  .  .  . 

"Once,  being  asked  whether  he  derived  more  satisfaction  from 
having  written  his  *  Essay  on  Puerperal  Fever,'  which  had  saved 
so  many  lives,  or  from  having  written  the  lyric  which  had  given 
pleasure  to  so  many  thousands,  Dr.  Holmes  replied:  'I  think  I 
will  not  answer  the  question  you  put  me.  I  think  oftenest  of 
"The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  which  is  a  favourite  poem  of  mine, 
though  I  wrote  it  myself.  The  essay  only  comes  up  at  long  inter- 
vals.   The  poem  repeats  itself  in  my  memory,  and  is  very  often 


1 6  8  "The  Saturday  Club 

spoken  of  by  correspondents  in  terms  of  more  than  ordinary  praise. 
I  had  a  savage  pleasure,  I  confess,  in  handHng  those  two  profes- 
sors, —  learned  men  both  of  them,  skilful  experts,  but  babies,  as 
it  seemed  to  me,  in  their  capacity  of  reasoning  and  arguing.  But 
in  writing  the  poem  I  was  filled  with  a  better  feeling  —  the  highest 
state  of  mental  exaltation  and  the  most  crystalline  clairvoyance, 
as  it  seemed  to  me,  that  had  ever  been  granted  me  —  I  mean  that 
lucid  vision  of  one's  thought,  and  of  all  forms  of  expression  which 
will  be  at  once  precise  and  musical,  which  is  the  poet's  special  gift, 
however  large  or  small  in  amount  or  value.  There  is  more  selfish 
pleasure  to  be  had  out  of  the  poem,  —  perhaps  a  nobler  satisfac- 
tion from  the  life-saving  labour.' " 

Still  speaking  of  this  poem,  Mr.  Morse  says:  "Abraham  Lin- 
coln knew  it  by  heart;  the  publishers  selected  it  from  all  Dr. 
Holmes's  poetry  for  printing  by  itself  in  an  elaborately  illustrated 
edition.  Hundreds  of  persons  can  repeat  every  line  of  it.  Such 
facts  mean  much." 

In  January  was  a  festival  of  the  Harvard  Musical  Association, 
of  which  our  John  Sullivan  Dwight  was  the  high  priest.  It  seems 
to  have  been  a  happy  occasion,  the  music  supplemented  by  a  seri- 
ous poem  by  Holmes  and  a  humorous  one  by  Lowell. 

In  early  spring,  Rowse  was  drawing  Longfellow's  head  in 
crayon,  but  the  poet  congratulates  himself  that  he  saved  enough 
of  the  day  to  write  a  whole  canto  of  "The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,"  at  first  called  "Priscilla."  Meantime  Felton  has  the 
happiness  to  set  sail  for  immortal  Athens.  At  the  Club  dinner  in 
May,  the  serene  and  kindly  Longfellow  was  stirred  to  very  plain 
speech.  He  writes:  "Felt  vexed  at  seeing  plover  on  the  table  at 
this  season,  and  proclaimed  aloud  my  disgust  at  seeing  the  game 
laws  thus  violated.  If  anybody  wants  to  break  a  law,  let  him 
break  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law.   That  is  all  it  is  fit  for."  ^ 

And  again  Longfellow's  journal  gives  evidence  of  his  frank  and 
fearless  speech,  but  courteous  to  the  guest  and  leaving  no  sting:  — 

^  Mr.  Emerson,  on  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  a  few  years  earlier,  was 
moved  to  speak  to  his  townsfolk  thus:  "An  immoral  law  makes  it  a  man's  duty  to  break 
it  at  every  hazard.  For  virtue  is  the  very  self  of  every  man.  It  is,  therefore,  a  principle 
of  law  that  an  immoral  contract  is  void,  and  that  an  immoral  statute  is  void.  For,  as  laws 
do  not  make  right,  and  are  simply  declaratory  of  a  right  which  already  existed,  it  is  not  to 
be  presumed  that  they  can  so  stultify  themselves  as  to  command  injustice." 


1858  1 69 


"July  31st,  1858.    Went  to  town  to  dine  with  the  Club.    The 

only  stranger  present  was  Judge  of  Florida.     I  discussed 

slavery  with  him.  He  said,  *  Slavery  always  has  existed.  Scripture 
does  not  forbid  it.  The  text  "Do  unto  others,"  etc.,  means  do  to 
the  slave  what  you  would  have  him  do  to  you  if  you  were  his 
slave.'  To  which  I  answered,  'If  you  were  a  slave,  the  thing  you 
would  wish  most  of  all  would  be  your  freedom.  So  your  Scrip- 
ture argument  for  Slavery  is  knocked  into  a  cocked  hat.'  He 
blushed,  then  laughed  and  said,  'Well,  it  is  so;  I  give  it  up,'  very 
frankly.  Came  down  in  the  evening  boat  [to  Nahant,  their  sum- 
mer home]  with  Agassiz." 

In  August,  Stillman,  their  variously  fit  and  attractive  captain, 
led  the  Adirondack  Club,  not  yet  to  their  Lake  Ampersand,  the 
purchase  of  which  was  probably  not  quite  completed,  but  to  a 
lake  easier  of  access  from  Bill  Martin's,  on  Lower  Saranac,  the 
end  of  the  long  wagon  drive  from  Keeseville,  New  York.  Still- 
man  wrote :  — 

"The  lake  where  our  first  encampment  was  made  was  known 
as  Follansbee  Pond,  .  .  .  and  it  lies  in  a  cul-de-sac  of  the  chain  of 
lakes  and  streams  named  after  one  of  the  first  of  the  Jesuit  ex- 
plorers of  the  Northern  States,  Pere  Raquette.  Being  elected 
captain  of  the  hunt,  and  chief  guide  of  the  Club,  it  depended  on  me 
also,  as  the  oldest  woodsman,  to  select  the  locality  and  superin- 
tend the  construction  of  the  camp,  and  the  choice  was  deter- 
mined by  the  facility  of  access,  the  abundance  of  game,  and  the 
fact  that  the  lake  was  out  of  any  route  to  regions  beyond,  giving 
the  maximum  of  seclusion,  as  the  etiquette  of  the  woods  pre- 
vented another  party  camping  near  us. 

"Follansbee  was  then  a  rare  and  beautiful  piece  of  untouched 
nature,  divided  from  the  highway,  the  Raquette,  by  a  marsh  of 
several  miles  of  weary  navigation,  shut  In  by  the  hills  on  all  sides 
but  that  by  which  we  entered,  the  forest  still  unscarred,  and  the 
tall  white  pines  standing  in  files  along  the  lake  shores  and  up  over 
the  ridges,  not  a  scar  of  axe  or  fire  being  visible  as  we  searched  the 
shore  for  a  fitting  spot  to  make  our  vacation  lodging-place.  Many 
things  are  requisite  for  a  good  camping-ground,  and  our  camp  was 
one  of  the  best  I  have  ever  seen,  at  the  head  of  the  lake,  with 


170  The  Saturday  Club 

beach,  spring,  and  maple  grove.  Two  of  the  hugest  maples  I 
ever  saw  gave  us  the  shelter  of  their  spreading  branches  and  the 
supports  to  the  camp  walls.  Here  we  placed  our  ridge-pole,  laid 
our  roof  of  bark  of  firs  (stripped  from  trees  far  away  in  the  forest, 
not  to  disfigure  our  dwelling-place  with  stripped  and  dying  trees), 
cut  an  open  path  to  the  lakeside,  and  then  left  our  house  to  the 
naiads  and  dryads,  and  hurried  back  forty  miles  to  meet  our 
guests.  .  .  .  Tradition  has  long  known  it  as  the  'Philosophers' 
Camp,'  though,  like  Troy,  its  site  is  unknown  to  all  the  subse- 
quent generations  of  guides,  and  I  doubt  if  in  all  the  Adirondack 
country  there  is  a  man  except  my  old  guide,  Steve  Martin,  who 
could  point  out  the  place  where  it  stood." 

However  surely  Oblivion  was  following  in  the  wake  of  those 
Argonauts  of  the  forest  chain  of  lakes,  the  freshness  of  their  joy 
still  lingers  in  the  verses  of  one. 

"'Welcome!'  the  wood-god  murmured  through  the  leaves,  — 
'Welcome,  though  late,  unknowing,  yet  known  to  me.' 
Evening  drew  on;  stars  peeped  through  maple  boughs. 
Which  o'erhung,  like  a  cloud,  our  camping-fire. 
Decayed  millennial  trunks,  like  moonlight  flecks. 
Lit  with  phosphoric  crumbs  the  forest  floor. 

"Ten  scholars,  wonted  to  lie  warm  and  soft 
In  well-hung  chambers,  daintily  bestowed. 
Lie  here  on  hemlock  boughs,  like  Sacs  and  Sioux, 
And  greet  unanimous  the  joyful  change. 
Sleep  on  the  fragrant  brush  as  on  down-beds. 
Up  with  the  dawn,  they  fancied  the  light  air 
That  circled  freshly  in  their  forest-dress 
Made  them  to  boys  again." 

Stillman  painted  on  the  spot  an  admirable  picture  of  the  morn- 
ing hours'  work  or  diversions,  before  the  excursions  by  boat  or 
on  foot  began,  the  sun  filtering  down  between  the  foliage  of  the 
vast,  columnar  trunks  of  pine,  maple,  and  hemlock.  There  are 
two  groups;  on  one  side,  Agassiz  and  Dr.  Jefi"ries  Wyman  dis- 
secting a  fish  on  a  stump,  with  John  Holmes,  doubtless  with 
humorous  comment,  and  Dr.  Estes  Howe,  as  spectators;  on  the 
other,  Lowell,  Judge  Hoar,  Dr.  Amos  Binney,  and  Woodman  try- 
ing their  marksmanship  with  rifles,  under  the  instruction  of  the 


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i858 


171 


tall  Don  Quixote-like  Stillman;  between  the  groups,  interested, 
but  apart,  stands  Emerson,  pleased  with  the  gifts  of  all.  Prolong- 
ing the  shooting  party  towards  the  edge  of  the  picture  two  or  three 
guides  are  gathered,  silent  critics.^ 

In  recruiting  this  company  the  rifle  had  proved  both  attractive 
and  repellent.  Stillman's  skill  whether  as  marksman  or  hunter 
was  unusual,  and  he  was  an  admirable  instructor  for  amateurs.  Of 
his  experiences  in  recruiting  the  party  he  wrote:  "I  had  done  all 
I  could  to  induce  Longfellow  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  to  join 
the  party,  but  the  latter  was  too  closely  identified  with  the  Hub 
in  all  its  mental  operations  to  care  for  unhumanlzed  nature,  and 
Longfellow  was  too  strongly  attached  to  the  conditions  of  com- 
pletely civilized  life  to  enjoy  roughing  it  in  flannels  and  sleeping 
on  fir  boughs.  The  company  of  his  great-brained  friends  was  a 
temptation  at  times,  I  think;  but  he  hated  killing  animals,  had 
no  interest  in  fishing,  and  was  too  settled  in  his  habits  to  enjoy 
so  great  a  change.  Possibly  he  was  decided  in  his  refusal  by  Emer- 
son's purchase  of  a  rifle.  'Is  it  true  that  Emerson  is  going  to  take 
a  gun?'  he  asked  me.  *Yes,'  I  replied.  'Then  I  shall  not  go,'  he 
said;  'somebody  will  be  shot.'" 

Though  Emerson  was  once  paddled  noiselessly  by  night  into  a 
remote  bay,  "jack  hunting"  (that  is,  with  a  torch  and  reflector 
in  the  bow  of  the  skiff),  and  the  guide  pointed  to  the  water's  edge, 
where  a  deer  was  gazing  at  the  wondrous  light,  and  whispered 
"Shoot,"  Emerson  could  only  see  a  "square  mist,"  and  his  rifle 
remains  until  now  guiltless  of  blood  of  man  or  beast.  Each  man 
of  the  company  had  a  special  guide  assigned  to  him  by  Stillman, 
but  he  asked  and  received  the  privilege  of  doing  that  service  in 
full  for  Agassiz,  rowing  him  in  his  own  boat  on  the  water  journey, 
and  almost  daily  on  his  collecting  excursions.   He  wrote: — • 

"For  Agassiz,  I  had  the  feeling  which  all  had  who  came  under 
the  magic  of  his  colossal  individuality,  —  the  myriad-minded 
one  to  whom  nothing  came  amiss  or  unfamiliar,  and  who  had  a 
facet  for  every  man  he  came  in  contact  with.  His  inexhaustible 
bonhomie  won  even  the  guides  to  a  personal  fealty  they  showed 

1  This  picture  was  bought  by  Judge  Hoar,  and  bequeathed  by  him  to  the  Concord 
Public  Library. 


172  The  Saturday  Club 

no  other  of  our  band;  his  wide  science  gave  us  continual  lectures 
on  all  the  elements  of  nature  —  no  plant,  no  insect,  no  quadruped 
hiding  its  secret  from  him.  The  lessons  he  taught  us  of  the  leaves 
of  the  pine,  and  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Laurentine  Range,  in 
one  of  whose  hollows  we  lay;  the  way  he  drew  new  facts  from  the 
lake,  and  knew  them  when  he  saw  them,  as  though  he  had  set  his 
seal  on  them  before  they  were  known;  the  daily  dissection  of  the 
fish,  the  deer,  the  mice  (for  which  he  had  brought  his  traps),  were 
studies  in  which  we  were  his  assistants  and  pupils.  All  this  made 
being  with  him  not  only  '  a  liberal  education,'  but  perpetual  sun- 
shine and  good  fortune.  When  we  went  out,  I  at  the  oars  and  he 
at  the  dredge  or  insect-net,  or  examining  the  plants  by  the  marsh- 
side,  his  spirit  was  a  perpetual  spring  of  science.  When  he  and 
Wyman  entered  on  the  discussion  of  a  scientific  subject  (and  they 
always  worked  together),  science  seemed  as  easy  as  versification 
when  Lowell  was  in  the  mood,  and  all  sat  around  inhaling  wisdom 
with  the  mountain  air.  Nothing  could  have  been,  to  any  man  with 
the  scientific  bent,  more  intensely  interesting  than  the  academy 
of  two  of  the  greatest  scientists  of  their  day." 

Stillman's  high  estimate  of  the  wise,  gentle,  judicial,  and  modest 
Jeffries  Wyman  will  be  given  in  the  sketch  of  him  later. 

"At  our  dinners,  the  semblance  of  which  life  will  never  offer 
me  again,  the  gods  sent  their  best  accompaniments  and  influ- 
ences —  health,  appetite,  wit,  and  poetry,  with  good  digestion. 

'Our  foaming  ale  we  drank  from  hunters'  pans  — 
Ale,  and  a  sup  of  wine.  Our  steward  gave 
Venison  and  trout,  potatoes,  beans,  wheat-bread. 
All  ate  like  abbots,  and,  if  any  missed 
Their  wonted  convenance,  cheerly  hid  the  loss  / 

With  hunter's  appetite  and  peals  of  mirth.' 

Lowell  was  the  Magnus  Apollo  of  the  camp.  His  Castalian  hu- 
mour, his  unceasing  play  of  wit  and  erudition  —  poetry  and  the 
best  of  the  poets  always  on  tap  at  the  table  —  all  know  them  who 
knew  him  well,  though  not  many  as  I  did;  but  when  he  sat  on 
one  side  of  the  table,  and  Judge  Hoar  (the  most  pyrotechnical 
wit  I  have  ever  known)  and  he  were  matching  table-talk,  with 
Emerson  and  Agassiz  to  sit  as  umpires  and  revive  the  vein  as  it 


i858 


173 


menaced  to  flag,  Holmes  and  Estes  Howe  not  silent  in  the  well' 
matched  contest,  the  forest  echoed  with  such  laughter  as  no  club 
ever  knew,  and  the  owls  came  in  the  trees  overhead  to  wonder. 
These  were  symposia  to  which  fortune  has  invited  few  men,  and 
which  no  one  invited  could  ever  forget.  .  .  . 

"For  Lowell  I  had  a  passionate  personal  attachment  to  which 
death  and  time  have  only  given  a  twilight  glory." 

Here  Stillman's  narrative  must  be  interrupted  to  put  on  record 
a  story  of  Lowell,  showing  a  quality  in  him  that  would  hardly 
have  been  divined  in  the  Cambridge  poet.  Emerson  wrote  it  in  his 
pocket  notebook  on  the  day  after  the  daring  venture. 

"On  the  top  of  a  large  white  pine  in  a  bay  was  an  osprey*s 
nest  around  which  the  ospreys  were  screaming,  five  or  six.  We 
thought  there  were  young  birds  in  it,  and  sent  Preston  to  the  top. 
This  looked  like  an  adventure.  The  tree  might  be  a  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  high,  at  least;  sixty  feet  clean  straight  stem,  without  a 
single  branch,  and,  as  Lowell  and  I  measured  it  by  the  tape  as 
high  as  we  could  reach,  fourteen  feet,  six  inches  in  girth.  Preston 
took  advantage  of  a  hemlock  close  by  it  and  climbed  till  he  got 
on  the  branches,  then  went  to  the  top  of  the  pine  and  found  the 
nest  empty,  though  the  great  birds  wheeled  and  screamed  about 
him.  He  said  he  could  climb  the  bare  stem  of  the  pine,  'though 
it  would  be  awful  hard  work.'  When  he  came  down,  I  asked  him 
to  go  up  it  a  little  way,  which  he  did,  clinging  to  the  corrugations 
of  the  bark.  Afterwards  Lowell  watched  long  for  a  chance  to 
shoot  the  osprey,  but  he  soared  magnificently,  and  would  not 
alight.  .  .  .  Lowell,  next  morning,  was  missing  at  breakfast,  and, 
when  he  came  to  camp,  told  me  he  had  climbed  Preston's  pine 
tree." 

To  resume  Stillman's  record :  — 

"To  Emerson,  as  to  most  men  who  are  receptive  to  Nature's 
message,  the  forest  was  the  overpowering  fact. 

'We  climb  the  bank, 
And  in  the  twilight  of  the  forest  noon 
Wield  the  first  axe  these  echoes  ever  heard.' 

The  'twilight  of  the  forest  noon'  is  the  most  concentrated  expres- 
sion of  the  one  dominant  sentiment  of  a  poetic  mind  on  first 


174  The  Saturday  Club 

entering  this  eternal  silence  and  shadow.  .  .  .  We  were  much  to- 
gether. I  rowed  him  into  the  innermost  recesses  of  Follansbee 
Water,  and  would,  at  his  request,  sometimes  land  him  in  a  soli- 
tary part  of  the  lake-shore,  and  leave  him  to  his  emotions  or 
studies.  We  have  no  post,  and  letters  neither  came  nor  went,  and 
so,  probably,  none  record  the  moment's  mood;  but  well  I  remem- 
ber how  he  marvelled  at  the  completeness  of  the  circle  of  life  in 
the  forest.  He  examined  the  guides,  and  me  as  one  of  them,  with 
the  interest  of  a  discoverer  of  a  new  race.  Me  he  had  known  in 
another  phase  of  existence  —  at  the  Club,  in  the  multitude,  one 
of  the  atoms  of  the  social  whole.  To  find  me  axe  in  hand,  ready 
for  the  elementary  functions  of  a  savage  life,  —  to  fell  the  trees, 
to  kill  the  deer,  or  catch  the  trout,  and  at  need  to  cook  them, — 
in  this  to  him  new  phenomenon  of  a  rounded  and  self-sufficient 
individuality,  waiting  for,  and  waited  on,  by  no  one,  he  received 
a  conception  of  life  which  had  the  same  attraction  in  its  com- 
pleteness and  roundness  that  a  larger  and  fully  organized  exist- 
ence would  have  had.  It  was  a  form  of  independence  which  he 
had  never  realized  before,  and  he  paid  it  the  respect  of  a  new 
discovery.  .  .  . 

"What  seems  to  me  the  truth  is,  that  Emerson  instinctively 
divided  men  into  two  classes,  with  one  of  which  he  formed  per- 
sonal attachments  which,  though  tranquil  and  undemonstrative, 
as  was  his  nature,  were  lasting;  in  the  other  he  simply  found  his 
objects  of  study,  problems  to  be  solved  and  their  solutions  re- 
corded. There  was  the  least  conceivable  self-assertion  in  him;  he 
was  the  best  listener  a  genuine  thinker,  or  one  whom  he  thought 
to  be  such,  ever  had;  and  always  seemed  to  prefer  to  listen  rather 
than  to  talk,  to  observe  and  study  rather  than  to  discourse.  So 
he  did  not  say  much  before  Nature;  he  took  in  her  influences  as 
the  earth  takes  the  rain.  He  was  minutely  interested  in  seeing 
how  the  old  guides  reversed  the  tendencies  of  civilization.  .  .  . 

"Looking  back  across  the  gulf  which  hides  all  the  details  of 
life,  the  eternal  absence  which  forgets  personal  qualities,  the  calm, 
platonic  serenity  of  Emerson  stands  out  from  all  our  company  as  a 
crystallization  of  impersonal  and  universal  humanity;  no  vexation, 
HO  mishap,  could  disturb  his  philosophy,  or  rob  him  of  its  lesson. 


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175 


"The  magical  quality  of  the  forest  is  that  of  oblivion  of  all  that 
is  left  in  the  busy  world,  of  past  trouble  and  coming  care.  The 
steeds  that  brought  us  in  had  no  place  behind  for  black  Care. 
We  lived,  as  Emerson  says,  — 

'Lords  of  this  realm, 

Bounded  by  dawn  and  sunset,  and  the  day 
Rounded  by  hours  where  each  outdid  the  last 
In  miracles  of  pomp,  we  must  be  proud, 
As  if  associates  of  the  sylvan  gods. 
We  seemed  the  dwellers  of  the  zodiac. 
So  pure  the  Alpine  element  we  breathed, 
So  light,  so  lofty  pictures  came  and  went.' " 

Stillman,  writing  the  above  happy  memories  of  a  golden  prime 
in  the  last  years  of  the  century,  said:  — 

"A  generation  has  gone  by  since  that  unique  meet,  and  of  those 
who  were  at  it  only  John  Holmes  and  I  now  survive.  The  voices 
of  that  merry  assemblage  of  'wise  and  polite'  vacation-keepers 
come  to  us  from  the  land  of  dreams;  the  echoes  they  awakened 
in  the  wild  wood  give  place  to  the  tender  and  tearful  evocation 
of  poetic  memory;  they  and  their  summering  have  passed  into 
the  traditions  of  the  later  camp-fires,  where  the  guides  tell  of  the 
'Philosophers'  Camp,'  of  the  very  location  of  which  they  have 
lost  the  knowledge.  Hardly  a  trace  of  it  now  exists  as  we  then 
knew  it.  The  lumberer,  the  reckless  sportsman  with  his  camp-fires 
and  his  more  reckless  and  careless  guide,  the  axe  and  the  fire,  have 
left  no  large  expanse  of  virgin  forest  in  all  the  Adirondack  region, 
and  every  year  effaces  the  original  aspect  of  it  more  completely." 

Emerson,  on  the  spot,  thus  strove  to  picture  Stillman's  heroic 
figure:  — 

"Gallant  artist,  head  and  hand, 
Adopted  of  Tahawus  grand. 
In  the  wild  domesticated, 
Man  and  Mountain  rightly  mated, 
Like  forest  chief  the  forest  ranged 
As  one  who  had  exchanged 
After  old  Indian  mode 
Totem  and  bow  and  spear 
In  sign  of  peace  and  brotherhood 
With  his  Indian  peer. 
Easily  chief,  who  held 


17^  The  Saturday  Club 

The  key  of  each  occasion 

In  our  designed  plantation, 

Can  hunt  and  fish  and  rule  and  row, 

And  out-shoot  each  in  his  own  bow, 

And  paint  and  plan  and  execute 

Till  each  blossom  became  fruit; 

Earning  richly  for  his  share 

The  governor's  chair, 

Bore  the  day's  duties  in  his  head, 

And  with  living  method  sped. 

Firm,  unperplexed. 

By  no  flaws  of  temper  vexed, 

Inspiring  trust. 

And  only  dictating  because  he  must,       \ 

And  all  he  carried  in  his  heart 

He  could  publish  and  define 

Orderly  line  by  line 

On  canvas  by  his  art. 

I  could  wish 

So  worthy  Master  worthier  pupils  had  — 

The  best  were  bad." 

One  day,  that  August,  a  thrill  of  human  communication  shot 
under  the  Atlantic  Ocean  from  continent  to  continent.  By  a 
strange  chance  the  quick-travelling  report  of  it  reached  the  camp- 
ers among  the  primeval  woods  while  on  a  lake  excursion.  Emer- 
son tells,  in  his  forest  notebook,  how 

"Loud  exulting  cries 
From  boat  to  boat,  and  in  the  echoes  round, 
Greet  the  glad  miracle.   Thought's  new-found  path 
Shall  supplement  henceforth  all  trodden  ways, 
Match  God's  equator  with  a  zone  of  art, 
And  lift  man's  public  action  to  a  height 
Worthy  the  enormous  cloud  of  witnesses. 
When  linked  hemispheres  attest  the  deed. 


A  spasm  throbbing  through  the  pedestals 
Of  Alp  and  Andes,  isle  and  continent 
Urging  astonished  Chaos  with  a  thrill 
To  be  a  brain,  or  serve  the  brain  of  man. 
The  lightning  has  run  masterless  too  long; 
He  must  to  school  and  learn  his  verb  and  noun 
And  teach  his  nimbleness  to  earn  his  wage."  ^ 

In  his  poem  Tlu  Adirondacs  the  reception  of  this  wonderful  news  is  told  at  greater  length. 


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177 


This  miracle  had,  indeed,  been  shown  to  be  possible,  yet  almost 

immediately  some  mischance  that  befel  the  cable  in  the  depths 

of  the  sea,  interrupted  its  use  for  seven  years.   When  this  occurred, 

another  of  our   poets,  "The  Professor,"  sent  forth  the  question 

on  everybody's  lips  as  to  who  in  the  Provinces  had  received  and 

transmitted  the  few  words  that  emerged  from  the  ocean  at  the 

western  landing-place.    He  published  the  whole  conversation,  as 

follows: — 

DE  SAUTY 

Professor  Blue-Nose 

Professor 

Tell  me,  0  Provincial!  speak,  Ceruleo-Nasal! 
Lives  there  one  De  Sauty  extant  now  among  you, 
Whispering  Boanerges,  son  of  silent  thunder, 
Holding  talk  with  nations? 

Is  there  a  De  Sauty,  ^  ambulant  on  Tellus, 
Bifid-cleft  like  mortals,  dormient  in  nightcap, 
Having  sight,  smell,  hearing,  food-receiving  feature 
Three  times  daily  patent? 

Breathes  there  such  a  being,  O  Ceruleo-Nasal? 
Or  is  he  a  Mythus,  —  ancient  word  for  "humbug," 
Such  as  Livy  told  about  the  wolf  that  wet-nursed 
Romulus  and  Remus? 

■    Was  he  bom  of  woman,  this  alleged  De  Sauty? 
Or  a  living  product  of  galvanic  action, 
Like  the  acarus  bred  in  Crosse's  flint-solution? 
Speak,  thou  Cyano-Rhinal ! 

Blue-Nose 

Many  things  thou  askest,  jackknife-bearing  stranger, 
Much-conjecturing  mortal,  pork-and-treacle-waster! 
Pretermit  thy  whittling,  wheel  thine  ear-flap  toward  me. 
Thou  shalt  hear  them  answered. 

When  the  charge  galvanic  tingled  through  the  cable, 
At  the  polar  focus  of  the  wire  electric 
Suddenly  appeared  a  white-faced  man  among  us; 
Called  himself  "De  Sauty." 

^  The  first  messages  received  through  the  submarine  cable  were  sent  by  an  electrical 
expert,  a  mysterious  personage  who  signed  himself  De  Sauty. 


1 7  8  The  Saturday  Club 

As  the  small  opossum,  held  in  pouch  maternal, 
Grasps  the  nutrient  organ  whence  the  term  mammalia. 
So  the  unknown  stranger  held  the  wire  electric, 
Sucking  in  the  current. 

When  the  current  strengthened,  bloomed  the  pale-faced  stranger,  — 
Took  no  drink  nor  victual,  yet  grew  fat  and  rosy,  — 
And  from  time  to  time,  in  sharp  articulation, 
Said,  ''All  right  I  De  Sauty." 

From  the  lonely  station  passed  the  utterance,  spreading 
Through  the  pines  and  hemlocks  to  the  groves  of  steeples. 
Till  the  land  was  filled  with  loud  reverberations 
Oi'' All  right!  De  Sauty." 

When  the  current  slackened,  drooped  the  mystic  stranger,  — 
Faded,  faded,  faded,  as  the  stream  grew  weaker,  — 
Wasted  to  a  shadow,  with  a  hartshorn  odour 
Of  disintegration. 

Drops  of  deliquescence  glistened  on  his  forehead, 
Whitened  round  his  feet  the  dust  of  efflorescence, 
TUl  one  Monday  morning,  when  the  flow  suspended, 
There  was  no  De  Sauty. 

Nothing  but  a  cloud  of  elements  organic, 
C.O.H.N.,  Ferrum,  Chlor.,  Flu.,  Sil.,  Potassa, 

Calc,  Sod.,  Phosph.,  Mag.,  Sulphur,  Mang.  (?)  Alumin.  (.?)  Cuprum,  (.?) 
Such  as  man  is  made  of. 

Born  of  stream  galvanic,  with  it  he  had  perished! 
There  is  no  De  Sauty  now  there  is  no  current! 
Give  us  a  new  cable,  then  again  we'll  hear  him 
Cry,  "^// n^Ai ./  De  Sauty." 

This  story  of  the  Club  comes  from  a  letter  which  Lowell  wrote 
to  a  friend  in  New  York  in  October:  "You  were  good  enough  to 
tell  me  I  might  give  you  an  account  of  our  dinners.  ...  I  remember 
one  good  thing  about  last  dinner.  The  dinner  was  for  Stillman, 
and  I  proposed  that  Judge  Hoar  should  propose  his  health  in  a 
speech.  'Sir!'  (a  long  pause)  'in  what  I  have  already  said  I 
believe  I  speak  the  sentiments  of  every  gentleman  present,  and 
lest  I  should  fail  to  do  so  in  what  I  further  say/  (another  pause) 
*I  sit  down.'" 


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179 


This  seems  to  me  a  good  instance  of  the  Judge's  temperamental 
doom  of  forgetting  (or  being  blind  to?)  important  considerations 
when  a  chance  for  unexpected  wit  offered.  The  Judge  did  not 
mean  to  be  disagreeable  to  Stillman,  with  whose  artistic  tempera- 
ment he  could  hardly  be  in  sympathy;  he  was  made 

"Of  rougher  stuff  that  could  endure  a  shake"  — 

and  thought  that  possible  sensitiveness  was  not  worth  taking 
too  much  care  about  when  a  truth  (as  it  possibly  was)  could  be 
flashed  out  and  would  amuse  everybody  else,  and  possibly  the 
guest.  He  was  like  a  horse  that,  when  he  sees  a  jump,  takes  the 
bit  in  his  teeth.  Lowell  had,  himself,  a  little  of  the  same  cruelty 
of  wit,  it  seems  to  me;  could  n't  sacrifice  an  opening  for  it. 

Lowell  goes  on:  "And  two  days  before,  at  Agassiz's,  —  the 
Autocrat  giving  an  account  of  his  having  learned  the  fiddle,  his 
brother  John,  who  sat  opposite,  exclaimed,  *I  can  testify  to  it;  he 
has  often  fiddled  me  out  of  the  house,  as  Orpheus  did  Euridice 
out  of  the  infernal  regions.'  Is  n't  that  good  .f*  It  makes  me  laugh 
to  look  at  it  now  I  have  written  it  down.  The  Autocrat  relating 
how  Simmons,^  the  Oak  Hall  man,  had  sent  'the  two  finest  pears' 
—  'of  trousers .f"  interrupted  somebody.  But  can  one  send  poured- 
out  champagne  all  the  way  to  New  York  and  hope  that  one  bubble 
will  burst  after  it  gets  there  to  tell  what  it  used  to  be?  A  dinner 
is  never  a  good  thing  next  day.  For  the  moment,  though,  what 
is  better?  We  dissolve  our  pearls  and  drink  them  nobly  —  if  we 
have  them  —  but  bring  none  away.  Nevertheless,  we  live  and 
dine  and  die." 

'  The  enterprising  pioneer  of  the  ready-made  clothing  business,  and  of  extensive  ad- 
vertising, in  Boston. 


WILLIAM  HICKLING  PRESCOTT 

The  dates  of  election  to  membership  In  the  Club  suggest  now 
and  then  curious  questions.  Why  this  or  that  man  was  not  chosen 
sooner  is  sometimes  a  puzzle.  On  the  other  hand,  considering 
the  natural  preference  for  a  dinner  company  of  manageable  con- 
versational size,  the  conservatism  of  middle-aged  gentlemen  long 
grown  fond  of  one  another's  society,  and  the  dread  power  of  the 
black-ball,  one  wonders  how  certain  members,  whatever  their 
individual  virtues  may  have  been,  could  possibly  have  been 
elected  at  all.  In  the  case  of  Prescott,  however,  the  only  surprise 
is  that  he  should  not  have  been  numbered  among  the  original 
members  of  the  Saturday  Club.  No  man  in  Boston  was  a  greater 
favourite  in  society,  and  while  the  delicate  state  of  his  health, 
throughout  his  entire  working  life,  was  such  as  to  deprive  him 
of  many  general  social  pleasures,  he  was  peculiarly  fond  of  such 
intimate  intercourse  with  a  few  friends  as  the  new  Club  afforded. 
Many  of  the  original  members,  like  Longfellow  and  Holmes,  were 
particularly  attached  to  him,  and  his  younger  fellow-historian, 
Motley,  who  had  good  reason  for  the  warmest  gratitude  to  Pres- 
cott, was  also  in  the  first  list  of  members.  Yet  Prescott,  for 
some  reason  not  now  discoverable,  though  very  likely  through 
his  own  hesitation  to  undertake  even  the  most  attractive  of 
new  social  obligations  until  his  unfinished  book,  the  History  of 
Philip  the  Second,  should  be  completed,  did  not  join  the  Saturday 
Club  until  1858.  In  February  of  that  year  he  suffered  a  slight 
shock  of  apoplexy,  was  put  in  consequence  upon  a  vegetarian 
diet,  and  was  forced  to  even  more  than  his  customary  self-denial 
of  social  pleasures.  It  Is  uncertain  whether  he  actually  attended 
any  dinners  of  the  Club.  In  January,  1859,  he  succumbed  to  a 
second  stroke  of  apoplexy.  In  our  Club  records,  the  name  of 
William  Hickling  Prescott  was  thus  the  first  to  be  marked  with 
an  asterisk. 
A  passage  from  Longfellow's  journal  expresses  the  universal 


Kf   ^'t 


Z-L^ 


William  Hickling  Prescott       1 8 1 

sense  of  loss  among  Prescott's  friends:  "January  29th,  1859. 
The  first  thing  that  catches  my  eye  in  the  morning  paper  is  the 
death  of  Prescott.  Mournful  news!  He  was  well  at  twelve  o'clock; 
at  two,  he  was  dead.  So  departs  out  of  our  circle  one  of  the  most 
kindly  and  genial  men;  a  man  without  an  enemy;  beloved  by  all 
and  mourned  by  all."  "We  shall  see  that  cheerful,  sunny  face  no 
more!"  Wrote  Longfellow  to  Sumner:  "Ah,  me!  what  a  loss  this 
is  to  us  all,  and  how  much  sunshine  it  will  take  out  of  the  social 
life  of  Boston!" 

On  the  31st  of  January,  the  poet  wrote  in  his  diary:  "Prescott's 
funeral  was  very  impressive  and  touched  me  very  much.  I  re- 
member the  last  time  I  spoke  with  Prescott.  It  was  only  a  few 
days  ago.  I  met  him  in  Washington  Street,  just  at  the  foot  of 
Winter  Street.  He  was  merry,  and  laughing  as  usual.  At  the  close 
of  the  conversation  he  said,  'I  am  going  to  shave  off  my  whis- 
kers; they  are  growing  gray.'  'Gray  hair  is  becoming,'  I  said. 
'Becoming,'  said  he,  'what  do  we  care  about  becoming,  who  must 
so  soon  he  goingV  'Then  why  take  the  trouble  to  shave  them  off?' 
'That's  true,'  he  replied  with  a  pleasant  laugh,  and  crossed  over 
to  Summer  Street.  So  my  last  remembrance  of  him  is  a  sunny 
smile  at  the  corner  of  the  street." 

Sumner's  answer  to  Longfellow's  letter  shows  not  only  his  own 
affection  but  the  esteem  in  which  Prescott  was  held  in  Europe. 

MoNTPELLiER,  March  4,  1859. 
Dear  Longfellow,  —  Yes,  it  was  your  letter  which  first  told 
me  of  Prescott's  death.  The  next  day  I  read  it  in  the  Paris  papers. 
Taillandier  announced  it  at  the  opening  of  his  lecture.  The  cur- 
rent of  grief  and  praise  is  everywhere  unbroken.  Perhaps  no  man, 
so  much  in  people's  mouths,  was  ever  the  subject  of  so  little  un- 
kindness.  How  different  his  fate  from  that  of  others !  Something 
of  that  immunity  which  he  enjoyed  in  life  must  be  referred  to  his 
beautiful  nature,  in  which  enmity  could  not  live.  This  death 
touches  me  much.  You  remember  that  my  relations  with  him  had 
for  years  been  of  peculiar  intimacy.  Every  return  to  Boston  has 
been  consecrated  by  an  evening  with  him.  I  am  sad  to  think  of 
my  own  personal  loss.  .  .  .  There  is  a  charm  taken  from  Boston. 


1 8  2  The  Saturday  Club 

Its  east  winds  whistle  more  coldly  round  Park  Street  Corner. 
They  begin  to  tingle  with  their  natural,  unsubdued  wantonness. 

Ten  years  earlier,  Longfellow's  journal  had  given  this  pleasant 
glimpse  of  Prescott  as  he  appeared  at  the  age  of  fifty-three,  un- 
subdued in  mind  or  body  by  his  infirmity:  "September  4,  1849. 
A  lovely  morning  tempted  me  into  town.  In  the  street,  met  Pres- 
cott, rosy  and  young,  with  a  gay  blue  satin  waistcoat,  gray  trousers, 
and  shoes." 

"Rosy  and  young,"  indeed,  was  the  impression  made  by  this 
rare  spirit,  from  first  to  last,  upon  his  contemporaries.  If  there  is 
little  to  be  said  about  Prescott's  brief  connection  with  the  Club 
upon  whose  roll  of  membership  his  is  still  one  of  the  most  hon- 
oured names,  something  must  nevertheless  be  indicated  as  to  the 
social  group  which  he  represented,  and  as  to  his  personal  char- 
acteristics. His  place  as  an  American  historian  is  too  well  known 
to  need  discussion  here. 

In  addition  to  many  essays  and  monographs,  two  lives  of  Pres- 
cott have  been  written.  One  was  by  his  lifelong  friend  George 
Ticknor,  published  in  1863.  The  old  scholar  of  Park  Street  com- 
posed a  stately  biography,  full  of  invaluable  matter,  in  which 
one  beholds  an  eminent  historian  decorously  robed  and  posed  for 
the  gaze  of  posterity.  Mr.  Rollo  Ogden  has  written  a  briefer  and 
more  informal  book  for  the  "American  Men  of  Letters"  series, 
but  his  work  is  soundly  documented  with  some  materials  inac- 
cessible to  Ticknor,  and  conveys,  more  vividly  than  was  possible 
for  the  historian  of  Spanish  Literature,  Prescott's  personal  charm. 
Yet  from  neither  of  these  books  one  gets  a  clear  impression  of  the 
secure,  opulent,  high-minded  society  into  which  William  Hickling 
Prescott  was  born  in  Salem  in  1796.  This  grandson  of  Colonel 
"Prescott  the  Brave"  of  Bunker  Hill  fame,  and  the  son  of  Judge 
Prescott,  first  of  Salem  and  after  1808  of  Boston,  took  his  place 
in  a  world  very  much  to  his  liking,  a  world  cultivated  and  serene, 
with  noble  traditions  and  agreeable  companionship.  His  college 
classmate.  President  Walker,  of  Harvard,  said  at  the  memorial 
meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  held  after  Pres- 
cott's death  in  1859:  "My  recollections  of  him  go  back  to  our  col- 


TVilliam  Hickling  Prescott        183 

lege  days,  when  he  stood  among  us  one  of  the  most  joyous  and 
light-hearted,  in  classic  learning  one  of  the  most  accomplished, 
without  any  enemies,  with  nothing  but  friends."  The  boy  lived 
in  1 1  Hollis,  like  his  father  William  before  him,  and  his  son  William 
after  him,  and  when  he  was  graduated  in  1814  Judge  Prescott  gave 
him  a  Commencement  "spread"  in  a  tent  large  enough  to  allow 
five  hundred  guests  to  sit  down  to  a  sumptuous  dinner.  The 
undergraduate  frolic  in  the  Commons,  which  cost  young  Pres- 
cott the  sight  of  his  left  eye  and  was  to  impair  so  seriously  his 
working  powers  for  the  remainder  of  his  days,  had  taken  place  in 
his  junior  year.  The  boy  who  threw  that  piece  of  bread,  Ticknor 
tells  us,  never  expressed  any  contrition  or  sympathy  for  the  suf- 
ferer, but  Prescott  knew  his  name,  and  later  in  life  rendered  him  a 
signal  kindness.  The  irreparable  physical  disability,  and  the  brave 
and  sweet  spirit  that  triumphed  over  it,  now  became  for  Prescott, 
as  later  for  Parkman,  the  fundamental  conditions  for  his  career. 
The  story  of  Prescott's  heroic  achievement  is  fortunately  a  familiar 
one,  and  need  not  be  retold  here  except  by  way  of  reminder  of  the 
nature  of  the  man  whom  the  Saturday  Club,  after  his  long  fight 
had  been  won,  desired  to  have  among  its  members. 

How  he  spent  two  years  in  Europe  for  his  health,  after  gradua- 
tion, and  how  he  came  home  in  1 817  to  subject  himself  to  the  most 
rigid  physical  and  intellectual  discipline  in  the  literatures  of 
England,  France,  Italy,  and  Spain,  is  well  known.  He  made  a 
most  happy  marriage  with  Susan  Amory.  His  father  gave  him 
an  ample  allowance.  He  could  purchase  books  without  stint, 
employ  secretaries,  secure  copies  of  manuscripts  from  foreign 
archives.  From  boyhood  he  had  been  a  great  favourite  in  Boston 
society,  and  as  early  as  181 8  he  was  one  of  the  founders  of  a  so- 
cial or  literary  club  which  he  enjoyed  for  forty  years.  Ticknor 
gives  a  list  of  the  members,  but  Prescott's,  as  it  happens,  is  the 
only  name  that  appears  also  upon  the  Saturday  Club  list.  It 
may  be  that  Prescott's  loyalty  to  this  older  organization  was  the 
reason  for  his  not  joining  the  Saturday  Club  at  its  beginning. 

His  taste  for  historical  studies  developed  early.  In  a  letter  to 
Dr.  Rufus  Ellis  in  1857  he  said:  "I  had  early  conceived  a  strong 
passion  for  historical  writing,  to  which,  perhaps,  the  reading  of 


184  The  Saturday  Club 

Gibbon's  Autobiography  contributed  not  a  little.  I  proposed  to 
make  myself  a  historian  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term."  Yet  for 
years  he  hesitated  between  "various  tempting  historical  fields,  and 
it  was  not  until  January  19,  1826,  that  he  wrote  in  his  diary: 
"I  subscribe  to  the  'History  of  the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella.'"  Mr.  Ogden  tells  us  that  over  against  this  entry  Pres- 
cott  added  in  1847  the  words:  "A  fortunate  choice."  After  ten 
years'  labour  the  manuscript  was  ready  for  the  printer.  Scarcely 
any  one  outside  of  Prescott's  family  knew  that  he  had  been  writ- 
ing. Finally  Judge  Prescott  remarked:  "The  man  who  writes  a 
book  which  he  is  afraid  to  publish  is  a  coward,"  and  the  book  ap- 
peared at  Christmas-time  in  1837.  This  was  the  year  of  Car- 
lyle's  French  Revolution,  a  work,  by  the  way,  which  Prescott 
thou'ght  "perfectly  contemptible"  in  both  form  and  substance. 
The  Scotchman's  groanings  and  objurgations  as  he  gave  birth  to 
his  masterpiece  are  in  curious  contrast  with  Prescott's  serene 
comment  upon  his  own  task.  "Pursuing  the  work,"  he  wrote, 
"in  this  quiet,  leisurely  way,  without  over-exertion  or  fatigue, 
or  any  sense  of  obligation  to  complete  it  in  a  given  time,  I  have 
found  It  a  continual  source  of  pleasure." 

Not  until  the  publication  of  Uncle  Tom^s  Cabin,  fifteen  years 
afterward,  did  any  book  rouse  such  a  furor  in  Boston.  It  was 
"the  fashionable  Christmas  present  of  the  season."  Ten  days 
after  publication,  Prescott  wrote  to  Ticknor,  who  was  then  In 
Europe:  "Their  Catholic  Highnesses  have  just  been  ushered  into 
the  world  in  two  royal  octavos.  The  bantling  appeared  on  a 
Christmas  morning,  and  certainly  has  not  fallen  still-born,  but 
is  alive  and  kicking  merrily.  How  long  Its  life  may  last  is  another 
question.  Within  the  first  ten  days  half  the  first  edition  of  five 
hundred  copies  (for  the  publishers  were  afraid  to  risk  a  larger  one 
for  our  market)  has  been  disposed  of,  and  they  are  now  making 
preparations  for  a  second  edition,  having  bought  of  me  twelve 
hundred  and  fifty  copies.  This  sale,  indeed,  seems  quite  ridic- 
ulous. .  .  .  The  small  journals  have  opened  quite  a  cry  in  my 
favour,  and  while  one  of  yesterday  claims  me  as  a  Bostonian,  a 
Salem  paper  asserts  that  distinguished  honour  for  the  witch- 
town."  And  then  Prescott  goes  on  to  make  this  singularly  inter- 


William  Hick  ling  Prescott        185 

esting  remark,  illuminating  the  literary  conditions  of  America 
as  they  were  in  the  very  year  of  Emerson's  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Address:  "But,  after  all,  my  market  and  my  reputation  rest 
principally  with  England,  and  if  your  influence  can  secure  me, 
not  a  friendly,  but  a  fair  notice  there,  in  any  one  of  the  three  or 
four  leading  journals,  it  would  be  the  best  thing  you  ever  did 
for  me,  —  and  that  is  no  small  thing  to  say." 

The  English  notices,  upon  which  the  success  of  an  American 
book  were  then  thought  to  depend,  were  not  only  fair  and  friendly, 
but  they  gave  Prescott  at  once  that  seat  at  the  high  table  of 
historians  which  he  still  occupies.  The  cautious  Henry  Hallam 
warned  Prescott  that  "a  book  published  in  a  foreign  country" 
would  not  make  its  way  rapidly  in  the  English  market,  yet  he 
expressed  his  belief  that  Prescott's  work  would  "acquire  by  de- 
grees a  classical  reputation."  Time  has  ratified  this  judgment. 
The  verdict  of  fellow-historians  and  the  long  list  of  Prescott's 
memberships  in  the  learned  societies  of  Europe  are  less  eloquent 
of  his  fame,  to  most  readers,  than  the  charming  sentences  with 
which  Thackeray  began  The  Virginians:  "On  the  library  wall  of 
one  of  the  most  famous  writers  of  America,  there  hang  two  crossed 
swords,  which  his  relatives  wore  in  the  great  War  of  Independ- 
ence. The  one  sword  was  gallantly  drawn  in  the  service  of  the 
King,  the  other  was  the  weapon  of  a  brave  and  honoured  Repub- 
lican soldier.  The  possessor  of  the  harmless  trophy  has  earned 
for  himself  a  name  alike  honoured  in  his  ancestor's  country  and 
his  own,  where  genius  such  as  his  has  always  a  peaceful  welcome." 

Prescott  went  serenely  forward  to  his  Conquest  of  Mexico,  a 
theme  surrendered  to  him  through  the  generosity  of  Washington 
Irving,  who  had  expected  to  work  that  rich  mine  himself.  The  cor- 
respondence between  the  two  writers  does  honour  to  them  both, 
but  it  bears  out  Mr.  Ogden's  impression  that  "Prescott  did  not 
fully  realize  what  it  cost  Irving  to  abandon  the  project.  The  grace 
of  the  surrender  hid  its  bitterness."  But  there  was  no  bitterness, 
surely,  in  Prescott's  own  surrender,  a  few  years  later,  of  a  portion 
of  his  Spanish  field  to  Motley.  This  was  before  the  publication 
of  Prescott's  Conquest  of  Peru,  and  when  only  a  few  men  knew 
that  he  intended  to  write  the  History  of  Philip  the  Second.   Motley 


1 86  "The  Saturday  Club 

wrote  In  1859  to  William  Amory,  Prescott's  brother-in-law,  and, 
like  Prescott  and  Motley,  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club,  a  full 
acknowledgment  of  Prescott's  courtesy  in  offering  him  every  pos- 
sible aid.  "He  assured  me,"  said  Motley,  "that  he  had  not  the 
slightest  objections  whatever  to  my  plan  [of  writing  The  Rise  of 
the  Dutch  Republic],  that  he  wished  me  every  success,  and  that,  if 
there  were  any  books  in  his  library  bearing  on  my  subject  that 
I  liked  to  use,  they  were  entirely  at  my  service."  And  Motley 
concludes  this  letter,  which  was  written  from  Rome  on  the  day 
he  heard  of  Prescott's  death,  with  these  words:  "Although  it 
seems  easy  enough  for  a  man  of  world-wide  reputation  thus  to  ex- 
tend the  right  hand  of  fellowship  to  an  unknown  and  struggling 
aspirant,  yet  I  fear  that  the  history  of  literature  will  show  that 
such  instances  of  disinterested  kindness  are  as  rare  as  they  are 
noble." 

Yet  this  nobility  of  tone  in  Prescott,  evidenced  by  the  lesser 
as  well  as  by  the  greater  acts  of  his  life,  seemed,  and  was,  the 
normal  expression  of  his  nature.  "You  have  had,"  wrote  Dean 
Milman  to  him  once,  "  I  will  not  say  the  good  fortune,  rather  the 
judgment  to  choose  noble  subjects."  Perhaps  "instinct"  would 
have  been  a  better  word  than  either  "good  fortune"  or  "judg- 
ment," the  instinct  of  a  happy  man  viewing  the  world  in  all  its 
length  and  breadth  with  a  generous  eye.  "He  could  be  happy 
in  more  ways,"  said  his  friend  Theophilus  Parsons,  "and  more 
happy  in  every  one  of  them,  than  any  other  person  I  have  ever 
known."  This  is  also  the  testimony  of  his  friends  William  H. 
Gardiner,  Sumner,  and  Longfellow.  He  radiated  happiness  as 
spontaneously  as  other  men  diffused  gloom.  He  did  not  possess 
what  is  called  a  philosophic  mind,  either  as  a  historian  or  a 
man,  but  once,  at  least,  he  tried  to  analyze  in  his  diary  the  secret 
of  his  enjoyment  of  life.    It  was  dated  May  4,  1845. 

"My  forty-ninth  birthday,"  he  says,  "and  my  twenty-fifth 
wedding-day;  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  one,  and  nearly  half  a 
century  the  other.  An  English  notice  of  me  last  month  speaks  of 
me  as  being  on  the  sunny  side  of  thirty-five.  My  life  has  been 
pretty  much  on  the  sunny  side,  for  which  I  am  indebted  to  a  sin- 
gularly fortunate  position  in  life;  to  Inestimable  parents,  who  both, 


William  Hickling  Prescott        187 

until  a  few  months  since,  were  preserved  to  me  in  health  of  mind 
and  body;  a  wife,  who  has  shared  my  few  troubles  real  and  imag- 
inary, and  my  many  blessings,  with  the  sympathy  of  another 
self;  a  cheerful  temper,  in  spite  of  some  drawbacks  on  the  score 
of  health;  and  easy  circumstances,  which  have  enabled  me  to 
consult  my  own  inclinations  in  the  direction  and  the  amount 
of  my  studies.  Family,  friends,  fortune,  —  these  have  furnished 
me  materials  for  enjoyment  greater  and  more  constant  than  is 
granted  to  most  men.  Lastly,  I  must  not  omit  my  books;  the  love 
of  letters,  which  I  have  always  cultivated  and  which  has  proved 
my  solace  —  invariable  solace  —  under  afflictions  mental  and  bod- 
ily, —  and  of  both  I  have  had  my  share,  —  and  which  have  given 
me  the  means  of  living  for  others  than  myself,  —  of  living,  I 
may  hope,  when  my  own  generation  shall  have  passed  away.  If 
what  I  have  done  shall  be  permitted  to  go  down  to  after  times, 
and  my  soul  shall  be  permitted  to  mingle  with  those  of  the  wise 
and  good  of  future  generations,  I  have  not  lived  in  vain." 

That  sounds,  somehow,  as  if  Cicero  had  written  it.  'But  one 
could  never  be  sure  that  Cicero  quite  meant  what  he  said,  and  one 
feels  sure  that  Prescott  is  telling  the  simple  truth,  in  noble  fashion. 

B.  P. 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 

The  records  of  the  Club  inform  us  that  Whittler  was  elected  in 
1858,  the  same  year  in  which  Prescott  became  a  member.  But  he 
seems  to  have  been  reluctant  to  avail  himself  of  his  privilege  of 
membership,  and  it  is  curious  that  Emerson,  after  the  lapse  of 
half  a  dozen  years,  seems  to  have  been  under  the  impression  that 
Whittier  had  never  joined  the  Club  at  all.  In  Emerson's  journal 
for  April,  1864,  there  is  an  account,  to  which  allusion  is  made  else- 
where in  this  book,  of  the  Club's  celebration  of  the  three-hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Shakspeare.  Whittier's  name  appears 
in  Emerson's  list  of  "outsiders"  who  were  invited  to  be  the  Club's 
guests  upon  this  occasion,  and  in  Emerson's  account  of  the  cele- 
bration, under  the  date  of  April  24,  he  instances  Whittier,  to- 
gether with  Bryant  and  others,  as  having  accepted  the  Club's  invi- 
tation, although  prevented  from  attendance.  These  careful  entries 
in  the  journal  are  sufficient  evidence  that  Whittier  had  not,  up  to 
1864,  really  identified  himself  with  the  Club,  and  though  his  name 
continued  to  be  borne  upon  the  rolls  until  his  death,  his  actual 
status  seems  to  have  been  that  of  an  "honorary  member"  who 
habitually  avoided  the  Club  dinners.  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields,  whose 
gracious  hospitality  in  Charles  Street  gave  keen  pleasure  to  Whit- 
tier in  his  later  years,  records  that  "he  was  seldom,  if  ever, 
persuaded  to  go  to  the  Saturday  Club,  to  which  so  many  of 
his  friends  belonged."  His  well-known  shyness  in  company,  his 
excessive  modesty  with  regard  to  his  own  literary  reputation, 
his  ascetic  habits  and  delicate  health  combined  to  make  him  feel 
out  of  place  in  the  cheerful  confusion  of  the  Parker  House  gather- 
ings. Yet  he  had  many  points  of  friendly  contact  with  individual 
members  of  the  Club,  particularly  with  Sumner,  Lowell,  Whipple, 
and  Fields,  and  he  was  made  aware,  in  many  ways  and  upon  not- 
able occasions,  of  the  respect  and  admiration  felt  for  him  by  men 
of  letters  in  whose  actual  company  he  was  never  quite  at  his 
best. 

To  understand  this  social  diffidence  lurking  in  one  of  the  most 


yohn  Greenkaf  TVhittier         189 

courageous  and  public-spirited  of  Americans,  one  must  bear  in 
mind  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  Whittler's  earlier  life,  the  os- 
tracism which  he  had  tacitly  accepted  during  the  darkest  days  of 
the  anti-slavery  cause,  and  a  kind  of  fiery  reluctance  toward  con- 
ventionalism, which  was  Inherited  from  his  Quaker  ancestry  and 
which  flashed  out  in  the  old  man's  eyes  from  time  to  time  until 
death  closed  them.  He  had  fought  the  "Cotton  Whigs"  of  State 
Street  too  bitterly  to  stretch  his  legs  under  respectable  Boston 
mahogany  and  feel  quite  at  ease  In  ZIon.  He  liked.  Indeed,  to  sit 
on  a  barrel  in  an  Amesbury  grocery  shop  and  talk  politics  with  his 
neighbours.  For  many  a  year  he  was  a  skilful  lobbyist  for  good 
causes  at  the  State  House  in  Boston.  James  G.  Blaine,  himself 
an  astute  political  card-player,  thought  Whittler  the  shrewdest 
natural  politician  he  had  ever  known,  and  Senator  George  F. 
Hoar  speaks  of  him  in  the  Autobiography  as  "one  of  the  wisest  and 
most  discreet  political  advisers  and  leaders  who  ever  dwelt  in  the 
Commonwealth."  But  the  Quaker's  delicate  manipulation  of  men 
and  measures  was  mainly  through  the  medium  of  personal  corre- 
spondence and  private  interviews.  He  avoided  public  gatherings 
as  far  as  possible,  though  it  is  well  known  that  he  was  prouder 
of  having  his  name  upon  the  list  of  members  of  the  Anti-Slavery 
Convention  of  1833  in  Philadelphia  than  of  having  it  upon  the 
title-page  of  any  book.  But  though  Whittler  preferred  to  live  a  se- 
cluded life,  he  was  no  mere  recluse,  and  he  was  by  no  means  averse 
in  the  eighteen-fifties  to  bookish  talk  with  a  few  Boston  friends. 
In  a  letter  to  Miss  Nora  Perry,  in  1887,  he  gives  a  pleasant  picture 
of  a  little  company  in  which  Whipple  was  a  leading  figure:  — 

"Whipple  was  one  of  the  first  to  speak  a  good  word  for  me  in 
the  North  American  Review.  I  used  to  meet  him  whenever  I  came 
to  Boston,  and  he  and  Fields,  and  Haskell,  editor  of  the  Boston 
Transcript,  and  I  used  to  get  together  at  the  'Old  Corner  Book- 
Store'  or  at  a  neighbouring  restaurant,  where  we  got  coffee  and 
chatted  pleasantly  of  men  and  books.  There  were  others  doubtless 
with  us  —  I  think  probably  Underwood  and  Starr  King,  and  later, 
J.  R.  Osgood.  I  used  to  think  Whipple  said  his  best  things  on  such 
occasions." 

Whittier's  friend  and  biographer  Underwood,  the  real  originator 


iQo  The  Saturday  Club 

of  the  Atlantic  Monthly^  and  the  tireless  promoter  of  those  Atlan- 
tic dinners  which  were  long  confused  with  the  Saturday  Club  din- 
ners, notes  Whittier's  reluctance  to  attend  formal  gatherings:  — 

"The  publishers,  Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.,  had  handsome  quar- 
ters on  Winter  Street,  and  Abolitionists,  who  gathered  there, 
—  Whittier,  Emerson,  Mrs.  Stowe,  Edmund  Quincy,  Professor 
Lowell,  Theodore  Parker,  and  others,  as  well  as  the  more  purely 
literary  contributors,  such  as  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Prescott, 
Motley,  Norton,  Cabot,  and  Trowbridge,  —  made  the  place  an 
attractive  centre.  .  .  .  The  leading  writers  of  the  Atlantic  were 
social,  and  were  accustomed  to  dine  together  once  a  month;  but 
Whittier,  who  was  abstemious  from  necessity  and  habit,  seldom 
came  to  the  dinners.  On  account  of  delicate  health  he  had  ac- 
customed himself  to  simple  fare,  and  he  never  tasted  wine  or  used 
tobacco;  so  that  the  meeting,  so  attractive  to  others,  had  few 
charms  for  him  beyond  social  converse." 

The  late  Colonel  T.  W.  Higginson,  another  biographer  of 
Whittier,  seems  to  imply  a  more  frequent  attendance  at  these 
Atlantic  Club  dinners,  where  Higginson  noted  that  Whittier 
"was  one  of  the  few  who  took  no  wine  among  that  group  of 
authors.  ...  At  the  dinners  of  the  Atlantic  Club,  during  the  first 
few  years  of  the  magazine,  I  can  testify  that  Whittier  appeared, 
as  he  always  did,  simple,  manly,  and  unbecomingly  shy,  yet  ret- 
icent and  quiet.  If  he  was  overshadowed  in  talk  by  Holmes  at 
one  end  and  by  Lowell  at  the  other,  he  was  in  the  position  of 
every  one  else,  notably  Longfellow,  but  he  had  plenty  of  humour 
and  critical  keenness  and  there  was  no  one  whose  summing  up 
of  affairs  was  better  worth  hearing.  .  .  .  His  unmoved  demeanour, 
as  of  a  delegate  sent  from  the  Society  of  Friends  to  represent  the 
gospel  of  silence  among  the  most  vivacious  talkers,  recalled  Haz- 
litt's  description  of  the  supper  parties  at  Charles  Lamb's, — 
parties  which  included  Mrs.  Reynolds,  *  who  being  of  a  quiet  turn, 
loved  to  hear  a  noisy  debate.'" 

Miss  Nora  Perry  records  a  characteristic  conversation  with 
Whittier  about  winning  personal  recognition  through  one's  writ- 
ings. "I  don't  like  notoriety,"  said  the  old  poet.  "I  don't  like 
that  part  of  personal  recognition,  which,  when  I  get  into  a  car. 


yohn  Green  leaf  TVhittier         191 

makes  people  nudge  their  neighbours  and  whisper,  'That's  Whit- 
tier!'"  Genuine  as  was  this  desire  to  avoid  publicity,  there  is  also 
no  question  that  Whittier's  good  sense  often  told  him  that  he 
paid  some  penalty  for  his  detachment  from  the  intellectual  life  of 
cities.  "I  feel  myself,"  he  wrote  to  Bayard  Taylor  in  1871,  "the 
need  of  coming  into  nearer  relations  to  the  great  life  of  our  cen- 
tres of  civilization  and  thought,  and  if  I  were  younger  and  stronger 
I  should  certainly  spend  my  winters  in  Boston." 

Whittier  seems,  indeed,  to  have  enjoyed  his  occasional  attend- 
ance upon  the  meetings  of  that  Radical  Club  which  has  been  agree- 
ably described  by  Mrs.  John  T.  Sargent.  It  was  here  that  he 
made  one  of  his  very  few  speeches,  at  the  memorial  service  after 
Charles  Sumner's  death.  Colonel  Higginson  has  described  this 
quaint  utterance  of  the  shy  poet:  — 

"If  he  had  any  one  firm  rule,  it  was  to  avoid  making  a  speech, 
and  yet  when,  being  called  on  unexpectedly  to  speak  at  a  private 
service  on  the  death  of  Charles  Sumner,  he  rose  and  told  offhand 
a  story  of  the  interment  of  a  Scotch  colonel,  with  military  hon- 
ours. By  mischance  an  unfriendly  regiment  had  been  detailed  to 
fire  a  salute  over  his  grave,  seeing  which,  an  onlooker  said,  'If  the 
Colonel  could  have  known  this,  he  would  not  have  died.'  — '  So  I 
feel,'  said  Mr.  Whittier,  'if  my  friend  Sumner  could  have  known 
that  I  should  have  been  asked  to  speak  at  his  memorial  service, 
he  would  not  have  died.'" 

Whittier's  acquaintance  with  Sumner  dated  from  the  latter's 
undergraduate  days  at  Harvard,  and  had  ripened  into  the  warm- 
est admiration.  When  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  in  1873, 
passed  a  vote  of  censure  upon  Sumner  for  his  proposal  that  the 
colours  of  the  national  regiments  should  not  bear  the  names  of  the 
battles  of  the  Civil  War  in  which  they  had  been  carried,  Whittier, 
with  his  old  political  skill,  drew  up  and  circulated  a  memorial  to 
the  Legislature  asking  that  the  vote  be  rescinded.  Longfellow  and 
other  members  of  the  Saturday  Club  signed  the  memorial,  and  in 
1874  the  unjust  resolution  of  censure  was  expunged. 

The  bond  between  Whittier  and  Sumner  was  their  passion  for 
the  cause  of  anti-slavery.  Whittier's  friendship  for  Lowell  had 
the  same  origin.  Lowell  had  urged  Whittier  in  1844  "to  cry  aloud 


192  T'he  Saturday  Club 

and  spare  not  against  the  cursed  Texas  plot,"  and  the  result  was 
Whittler's  stirring  "Texas:  Voice  of  New  England."  Four  years 
later  came  Lowell's  well-known  lines  on  Whittier  in  "A  Fable 
for  Critics":  — 

"All  honour  and  praise  to  the  right-hearted  bard 
Who  was  true  to  The  Voice  when  such  service  was  hard, 
Who  himself  was  so  free  he  dared  sing  for  the  slave 
When  to  look  but  a  protest  in  silence  was  brave." 

The  friendship  lasted  to  the  end.  When  Lowell  became  editor 
of  the  Atlantic  he  called  constantly  upon  Whittier  for  contribu- 
tions. There  is  a  pleasant  note  from  Whittier  to  his  editor  about 
one  of  these  poems,  just  after  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  had 
made  Whittier  an  overseer  of  Harvard  in  1858.  "Let  me  hear 
from  thee  In  some  way,"  wrote  the  Quaker  to  the  dilatory  editor. 
"If  thee  fail  to  do  this,  I  shall  turn  thee  out  of  thy  professor's 
chair,  by  virtue  of  my  new  office  of  overseer." 

Whittier's  relations  with  Emerson  were  friendly,  but  never  inti- 
mate. He  had  welcomed  Emerson's  "Concord  Address"  of  1844 
in  an  editorial  which  recorded  his  impatience  that  Emerson  had 
not  spoken  out  earlier  on  the  anti-slavery  issue:  "With  a  glow  of 
heart,  with  silently  invoked  blessings,  we  have  read  the  address 
whose  title  is  at  the  head  of  this  article.  We  had  previously,  we 
confess,  felt  half  indignant  that,  while  we  were  struggling  against 
the  popular  current,  mobbed,  hunted,  denounced  from  the  legis- 
lative forum,  cursed  from  the  pulpit,  sneered  at  by  wealth  and 
fashion  and  shallow  aristocracy,  such  a  man  as  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  should  be  brooding  over  his  pleasant  philosophies,  writ- 
ing his  quaint  and  beautiful  essays,  in  his  retirement  on  the 
banks  of  the  Concord,  unconcerned  and  'calm  as  a  summer  morn- 
ing.' .  .  .  How  could  he  sit  there,  thus  silent.^  Did  no  ripple  of  the 
world's  agitation  break  the  quiet  of  old  Concord.?"  But  Emer- 
son's later  attacks  upon  the  slave  power,  in  magnificent  verse  and 
prose,  were  more  than  full  atonement,  Whittier  thought,  for 
his  initial  tardiness. 

Although  Whittier  wrote  poems  about  several  members  of  the 
Saturday  Club,  —  Sumner,  Fields,  Lowell,  Agassiz,  —  and  al- 
though the  last  poem  he  ever  composed  was  addressed  to  Oliver 


yohn  Greenleaf  TVhittier         193 

Wendell  Holmes,  it  remains  true  that  he  never  came  into  very 
close  personal  relations  with  any  of  them,  unless  an  exception  be 
made  of  Whipple  and  Fields.  He  was  respected  and  admired  by 
the  Club  group,  but  after  all  he  had  had  to  fight  his  own  battles 
single-handed  in  his  youth,  and  in  his  old  age  he  remained  a  man 
apart  from  confidential  intimacies  with  other  men.  Mrs.  Fields 
doubtless  understood  him  better  than  her  husband  did. 

"His  most  familiar  acquaintances,"  said  his  biographer  George 
R.  Carpenter,  "were  almost  invariably  women;  and  this  was  nat- 
ural. Ascetic  in  life,  not  touching  wine  or  tobacco,  unused  to 
sport,  frail  of  health,  isolated  in  residence,  without  employment 
that  brought  him  into  regular  contact  with  his  fellows,  reticent 
and  shy,  there  was  no  line  of  communication  open  between  his 
life  and  that  of  men  of  robust  and  active  habits,  whose  peer  he 
really  was.  Women  understood  better  his  prim  and  gentle  ways, 
his  physical  delicacy,  his  saintly  devotion  to  spiritual  ideals.  His 
most  frequent  correspondents  were  women  —  Lucy  Larcom,  Alice 
and  Phoebe  Cary,  Celia  Thaxter,  Gail  Hamilton,  Mrs.  Stowe, 
Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  Edith  Thomas,  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  Edna 
Dean  Proctor,  Mrs.  Fields,  Mrs.  Claflin  —  and  his  letters  to  them 
show  sincere  friendship  and  community  of  spirit.  In  old  age  his 
was  the  point  of  view,  the  theory  of  life,  of  the  woman  of  gentle 
tastes,  literary  interests,  and  religious  feeling.  The  best  accounts 
of  his  later  life  are  those  of  Mrs.  Claflin  and  Mrs.  Fields,  in  whose 
houses  he  was  often  a  guest;  and  they  have  much  to  say  of  his 
sincere  friendliness  and  quiet  talk,  his  shy  avoidance  of  notoriety 
or  even  of  a  large  group  of  people,  his  keen  sense  of  humour,  his 
tales  of  his  youth,  his  quaintly  serious  comments  on  life,  his  sud- 
den comings  and  goings,  as  inclination  moved,  and  of  the  rare 
occasions  when,  deeply  moved,  he  spoke  of  the  great  Issues  of 
religion  with  beautiful  earnestness  and  simple  faith.  And  It  Is 
pleasant  to  think  of  this  farmer's  lad,  who  had  lived  for  forty  years 
in  all  but  poverty  for  the  love  of  God  and  his  fellows,  taking  an  In- 
nocent delight  In  the  luxury  of  great  houses  and  in  the  sheltered 
life  of  those  protected  from  hardship  and  privation.  After  his 
long  warfare  this  was  a  just  reward." 

Many  members  of  the   Saturday  Club  were   present  at  the 


194  The  Saturday  Club 

dinner  given  by  Whittier's  publishers  in  honour  of  his  seventieth 
birthday  on  December  17,  1877.  A  homely  anecdote  related  by 
a  kinswoman  of  the  old  poet  gives  an  amusing  picture  of  his  re- 
luctance to  make  a  public  appearance.  "I  shall  have  to  buy  a  new 
pair  of  pants,"  he  complained;  but  finally  he  accepted  the  invita- 
tion and  sat  gravely  through  the  ordeal.  The  dinner  owes  much 
of  its  fame  to-day  to  the  ill-success  of  a  humorous  speech  at- 
tempted by  Mark  Twain,  whose  biographer,  Mr.  Paine,  has  given 
a  veracious  account  of  Mark's  daring  effort  to  describe  how  three 
disreputable  frontier  tramps  tried  to  pass  themselves  off  upon  a 
lonely  miner  as  Longfellow,  Emerson,  and  Holmes.  All  three  of 
these  gentlemen  were  guests  at  the  Whittier  dinner,  and  though 
none  of  them  seems  to  have  resented  Mark's  elaborate  joke,  it 
proved  a  ghastly  failure  with  the  audience.  His  remarks  are  given 
in  full  in  Mr.  Paine's  edition  of  his  Speeches,  and  the  Life  of  Mark 
Twain  gives  unsparing  record  of  the  humourist's  contrition,  his 
apologies  to  Emerson,  Holmes,  and  Longfellow,  and  finally  the 
delightful  revulsion  of  feeling  in  which,  many  years  later,  he  con- 
firmed his  faith  that  it  was  really  a  good  speech  after  all!  Mr. 
Howells,  who  presided  at  the  dinner,  and  introduced  Mark  Twain, 
had  his  own  sorrows  over  the  catastrophe,  as  he  has  recorded  hu- 
morously in  his  My  Mark  Twain.  Not  the  least  amusing  aspect 
of  the  affair  is  the  fact  that  Mr.  Clemens  did  not  quite  dare  to 
send  to  the  guest  of  honour  a  copy  of  the  letter  of  apology  which 
he  addressed  to  the  other  poets. 

"  I  wrote  a  letter  yesterday,  and  sent  a  copy  to  each  of  the  three. 
I  wanted  to  send  a  copy  to  Mr.  Whittier  also,  since  the  offence 
was  done  also  against  him,  being  committed  in  his  presence  and 
he  the  guest  of  the  occasion,  besides  holding  the  well-nigh  sa- 
cred place  he  does  in  his  people's  estimation;  but  I  did  n't  know 
whether  to  venture  or  not,  and  so  ended  by  doing  nothing.  It 
seemed  an  intrusion  to  approach  him,  and  even  Lily  seemed  to 
have  her  doubts  as  to  the  best  and  properest  way  to  do  in  the 
case.  I  do  not  reverence  Mr.  Emerson  less,  but  somehow  I  could 
approach  him  easier."  This  letter  is  a  curiously  interesting  evi- 
dence of  the  impression  made  by  Whittier's  personality  upon  a 
reckless  man  of  genius  of  the  younger  generation. 


yohn  Greenleaf  TVhittier         195 

The  celebration  of  Whittler's  eightieth  birthday,  in  1887,  called 
forth  many  tributes  from  his  old  friends  of  the  Saturday  Club. 
Senator  George  F.  Hoar  spoke  of  him  with  noble  eloquence  at  a 
banquet  in  Boston :  there  was  a  testimonial  signed  by  representa- 
tives of  every  State  and  Territory  in  the  Union;  and  there  were 
verses  by  Holmes,  Lowell,  Parkman,  Hedge,  and  George  F.  Hoar 
of  the  Saturday  Club,  as  well  as  poems  by  Walt  Whitman  and 
other  well-known  writers.  Whittier  spent  the  day  at  Oak  Knoll, 
Danvers,  and  was  able  to  receive  a  great  company  of  distinguished 
guests. 

For  nearly  five  years  longer  the  aged  poet  survived.  His  last 
poem  was  written  for  Dr.  Holmes's  eighty-third  birthday  on 
August  29,  1892;  and  on  September  7  of  that  year  he  passed 
away.  Holmes's  pathetic  memorial  verses  close  with  this  stanza :  — 

"Lift  from  its  quarried  ledge  a  flawless  stone; 
Smooth  the  green  turf,  and  bid  the  tablet  rise, 
And  on  its  snow-white  surface  carve  alone 

These  words,  —  he  needs  no  more,  —  Here  Whittier  lies" 

For  that  generation,  indeed,  there  was  no  need  to  say  more. 
"Whittier  was  not,"  as  I  have  written  elsewhere,  "one  of  the 
royally  endowed,  far-shining,  'myriad-minded'  poets.  He  was 
rustic,  provincial;  a  man  of  his  place  and  time  in  America.  It  is 
doubtful  if  European  readers  will  ever  find  him  richly  suggestive, 
as  they  have  found  Emerson,  Poe,  and  Whitman.  But  he  had  a 
tenacious  hold  upon  certain  realities:  first,  upon  the  soil  of  New 
England,  of  whose  history  and  legend  he  became  such  a  sympa- 
thetic interpreter;  next,  upon  'the  good  old  cause'  of  Freedom, 
not  only  in  his  own  country  but  in  all  places  where  the  age-long 
and  still  but  half-won  battle  was  being  waged;  and  finally,  upon 
some  permanent  objects  of  human  emotion,  —  the  hill-top,  shore, 
and  sky,  the  fireside,  the  troubled  heart  that  seeks  rest  in  God. 
Whittier's  poetry  has  revealed  to  countless  readers  the  patient 
continuity  of  human  life,  its  fundamental  unity,  and  the  ultimate 
peace  that  hushes  its  discords.  The  utter  simplicity  of  his  Quaker's 
creed  has  helped  him  to  interpret  the  religious  mood  of  a  genera- 
tion which  has  grown  impatient  of  formal  doctrine.  His  hymns 
are  sung  by  almost  every  body  of  Christians,  the  world  over.   It 


19^  The  Saturday  Club 

is  unlikely  that  the  plain  old  man  who  passed  quietly  away  in  a 
New  Hampshire  village  on  September  7,  1892,  aged  eighty-five, 
will  ever  be  reckoned  one  of  the  world-poets.  But  he  was,  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word,  a  world's-man  in  heart  and  in  action,  a 
sincere  and  noble  soul  who  hated  whatever  was  evil  and  helped 
to  make  the  good  prevail;  and  his  verse,  fiery  and  tender  and  un- 
feigned, will  long  be  cherished  by  his  country-men." 

B.  P. 


Chapter  VI 

1859 

In  smiles  and  tears,  in  sun  and  showers. 

The  minstrel  and  the  heather. 
The  deathless  singer  and  the  flowers 

He  sang  of  live  together. 

Wild  heather-bells  and  Robert  Burns! 

The  moorland  flower  and  peasant! 
How,  at  their  mention,  memory  turns 

Her  pages  old  and  pleasant! 

But  who  his  human  heart  has  laid 

To  Nature's  bosom  nearer? 
Who  sweetened  toil  like  him,  or  paid 

To  love  a  tribute  dearer? 

Whittier 

THE  notable  event  in  the  first  month  of  this  year  was  the 
celebration  on  January  25  of  the  centennial  birthday  of 
Robert  Burns.  Whether  or  no  the  Saturday  Club  were  the  movers, 
it  is  certain  that  many  of  the  members  were  there,  and  brought 
tributes  to  Scotland's  Poet  of  the  People.  Holmes,  Lowell,  Whit- 
tier had  written  poems,  and  Emerson  spoke.  He  so  warmed 
to  this  occasion  that  many  of  those  who  heard  him  believed 
that  his  words  were  given  him  on  the  moment  of  utterance.  Yet  he 
never  trusted  himself  on  important  occasions  in  extempore  speech, 
and  the  manuscript  remains  as  evidence.^ 

Longfellow  wrote  to  Fields:  "I  am  very  sorry  not  to  be  there. 
You  will  have  a  delightful  supper,  or  dinner,  whichever  it  is;  and 
human  breath  enough  expended  to  fill  all  the  trumpets  of  Iskan- 
der  for  a  month  or  more.^  Alas!  ...  I  shall  not  be  there  to  ap- 
plaud! All  this  you  must  do  for  me;  and  also  eat  my  part  of  the 

^  Printed  in  the  Miscellanies  in  the  Riverside  and  Centenary  Editions  of  Emerson's 
Works. 

^  The  reference  is  to  a  poem  by  Leigh  Hunt,  which  was  a  favourite  of  Longfellow's.  Its 
title  is  "The  Trumpets  of  Doolkarnein."   Iskander  was  an  Asiatic  version  of  Alexander. 


19^  The  Saturday  Club 

haggis  which  I  hear  is  to  grace  the  feast.  This  shall  be  your  duty 
and  your  reward." 
This  is  Holmes's  poem :  — 

"His  birthday.  —  Nay,  we  need  not  speak 
The  name  each  heart  is  beating,  — 
Each  glistening  eye  and  flushing  cheek 
In  light  and  flame  repeating! 

"  We  come  in  one  tumultuous  tide,  — 
One  surge  of  wild  emotion,  — 
As  crowding  through  the  Frith  of  Clyde 
Rolls  in  the  Western  Ocean; 

"As  when  yon  cloudless,  quartered  moon 
Hangs  o'er  each  storied  river, 
The  swelling  breasts  of  Ayr  and  Doon 
With  sea-green  wavelets  quiver. 

"The  century  shrivels  like  a  scroll,  — 
The  past  becomes  the  present,  — 
And  face  to  face,  and  soul  to  soul, 
We  greet  the  monarch-peasant. 

"While  Shenstone  strained  in  feeble  flights 
With  Corydon  and  Phyllis,  — 
While  Wolfe  was  climbing  Abraham's  heights 
To  snatch  the  Bourbon  lilies,  — 

"Who  heard  the  wailing  infant's  cry, 
The  babe  beneath  the  sheeling, 
Whose  song  to-night  in  every  sky 
Will  shake  earth's  starry  ceiling,  — 

"Whose  passion-breathing  voice  ascends 
And  floats  like  incense  o'er  us, 
Whose  ringing  lay  of  friendship  blends 
With  labour's  anvil  chorus? 

"We  love  him,  not  for  sweetest  song, 
Though  never  tone  so  tender; 
We  love  him,  even  in  his  wrong,  — 
His  wasteful  self-surrender. 

"We  praise  him,  not  for  gifts  divine,  — 
His  Muse  was  born  of  woman,  — 


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His  manhood  breathes  in  every  line,  — 
Was  ever  heart  more  human? 

"We  love  him,  praise  him,  just  for  this: 
In  every  form  and  feature. 
Through  wealth  and  want,  through  woe  and  bliss, 
He  saw  his  fellow-creature! 

"No  soul  could  sink  beneath  his  love,  — 
Not  even  angel  blasted; 
No  mortal  power  could  soar  above 
The  pride  that  all  outlasted! 

"Ay!  Heaven  had  set  one  living  man 
Beyond  the  pedant's  tether,  — 
His  virtues,  frailties,  He  may  scan 
Who  weighs  them  all  together! 

"I  fling  my  pebble  on  the  cairn 
Of  him,  though  dead,  undying; 
Sweet  Nature's  nursling,  bonniest  bairn, 
Beneath  her  daisies  lying. 

"The  waning  suns,  the  wasting  globe, 
Shall  spare  the  minstrel's  story,  — 
The  centuries  weave  his  purple  robe, 
The  mountain-mist  of  glory!" 

Two  days  later,  the  Club  lost  from  its  desired  membership 
William  Hickling  Prescott,  brave,  genial  and  well-beloved  man, 
and  devoted  scholar,  in  spite  of  his  cruel  loss  of  sight.  It  is  not 
surely  known  whether  he  had  yet  attended  one  meeting  of  the 
Club.  His  loss  was  sorely  felt  in  the  Boston  and  Cambridge 
community. 

Sumner,  grieved  at  the  loss  of  this  dear  friend,  and  neighbour 
in  Boston,  wrote  from  Montpellier,  in  France,  that  his  death  was 
announced  in  all  the  Paris  papers.  "The  current  of  grief  and 
praise  is  everywhere  unbroken.  Perhaps  no  man  so  much  in 
people's  mouths  was  ever  the  subject  of  so  little  unkindness. 
How  different  his  fate  from  that  of  others!  Something  of  that 
immunity  which  he  enjoyed  in  life  must  be  referred  to  his  beau- 
tiful nature  in  which  enmity  could  not  live. " 


2  00  The  Saturday  Club 

The  Atlantic  was  now  growing  in  fame  and  circulation.  Lowell 
was  writing  articles  on  Shakspeare.  A  neatly  hidden  joke  lay 
in  one  of  these,  as  follows:  "To  every  commentator  who  has 
wantonly  tampered  with  the  text,  or  obscured  it  with  his  inky 
cloud  of  paraphrase,  we  feel  inclined  to  apply  the  quadrisyllabic 
name  of  the  brother  of  Agis,  King  of  Sparta."  Felton  was  able 
to  explain  the  joke.   Agis's  brother  was  called  Eudamidas. 

The  Club  celebrated  Lowell's  fortieth  birthday,  February  22. 
Dr.  Holmes  had  written  a  poem  which  I  do  not  find  included  in 
his  volume. 

Emerson  was  anxious  not  to  fail  in  his  tribute,  but  had  diffi- 
culty with  it;  yet  at  length  it  came,  not,  however,  satisfactory 
to  him.  The  prophecy,  at  its  end,  of  Lowell's  public  service  of 
the  Country  seems  remarkable,  and  may  justify  its  presenta- 
tion here. 

BIRTHDAY  VERSES  FOR  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

As  I  left  my  door 

The  Muse  came  by;  said,  "Whither  away?" 
I,  well  pleased  to  praise  myself 
And  in  this  presence  raise  myself, 
Replied,  "To  keep  thy  bard's  birthday." 
"Oh  happy  morn!   Oh,  happy  eve!  " 
Rejoined  the  Muse.    "  And  dost  thou  weave 
For  noble  wight  a  noble  rhyme, 
And  up  to  song  through  friendship  climb? 
For  every  guest 
Ere  he  can  rest 

Plucks  for  my  son  or  flower  or  fruit 
In  sign  of  Nature's  glad  salute." 
Alas!  Thou  know'st, 
Dearest  Muse,  I  cannot  boast 
Of  any  grace  from  thee. 
To  thy  spare  bounty.  Queen,  thou  ow'st 
No  verse  will  flow  from  me. 
Beside,  the  bard  himself,  profuse 
In  thy  accomplishment. 
Does  comedy  and  lyric  use, 
And  to  thy  sisters  all  too  dear. 
Too  gifted,  than  that  he  can  choose 
But  raise  an  eyebrow's  hint  severe 
On  the  toiling  good  intention 


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Of  ill-equipped  inapprehension. 
"The  bard  is  loyal," 

Said  the  Queen 

With  haughtier  mien, 
"  And  hear  thou  this,  my  mandate  royal; 

Instant  to  the  Sibyl's  chair. 

To  the  Delphic  maid  repair; 

He  has  reached  the  middle  date. 

Stars  to-night  which  culminate 

Shed  beams  fair  and  fortunate. 

Go  inquire  his  horoscope. 

Half  of  memory,  half  of  hope." 


From  Paques  to  Noel 
Prophets  and  bards, 
Merlin,  Llewelleyn, 
High  born  Hoel, 
Well  born  Lowell,  — 
What  said  the  Sibyl, 
What  was  the  fortune 
She  sung  for  him? 
Strength  for  the  hour. 

Man  of  sorrow,  man  of  mark. 
Virtue  lodged  in  sinew  stark. 
Rich  supplies  and  never  stinted,  — 
More  behind  at  need  is  hinted; 
Never  cumbered  with  the  morrow. 
Never  knew  corroding  sorrow; 
Too  well  gifted  to  have  found 
Yet  his  opulence's  bound; 
Most  at  home  in  mounting  fun, 
Broadest  joke  and  luckiest  pun. 
Masking  in  the  mantling  tones 
Of  a  rich  laughter-loving  voice, 
In  speeding  troops  of  social  joys. 
And  in  volleys  of  wild  mirth 
Pure  metal,  rarest  worth. 
Logic,  passion,  cordial  zeal 
Such  as  bard  and  martyr  feel. 

Strength  for  the  hour. 
For  the  day  sufficient  power. 
Well  advised,  too  easily  great 
His  large  place  to  antedate. 


2  02  The  Saturday  Club 

But,  if  another  temper  come, 
\         If  on  the  sun  shall  creep  a  gloom, 
A  time  and  tide  more  exigent, 
When  the  old  mounds  are  torn  and  rent, 
More  proud,  more  strong  competitors 
Marshall  the  lists  for  emperors,  — 
Then  the  pleasant  bard  will  know 
To  put  the  frolic  mask  behind  him 
Like  an  old,  familiar  cloak, 
And  in  sky-born  mail  to  bind  him, 
And  single-handed  cope  with  Time, 
And  parry  and  deal  the  thunder-stroke. 

In  March,  Emerson's  journal  shows  that  he  read  his  lecture 
"Clubs"  ^  at  the  Freeman  Place  Chapel  in  Boston,  which  showed 
how  much  he,  a  secluded  scholar,  valued  the  opportunity  and 
refreshment  which  they  gave;  and  also  how  he  realized  the  ne- 
cessity of  carefully  considered  membership  which  should  prevent 
heart-burnings  in  those  not  chosen. 

Longfellow  records,  in  his  diary,  "Agassiz  triumphant  with 
his  new  Museum,  having  a  fund  of  over  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars."  And,  in  June,  that  Agassiz  goes  to  Switzerland,  "where 
he  is  to  pass  the  summer  with  his  mother  at  Lausanne." 

Early  in  May,  Dr.  Howe  wrote  to  Mr.  Forbes,  speaking  highly 
of  "Captain"  John  Brown,  evidently  wishing  that  he  should  have 
an  opportunity  to  interest  Mr.  Forbes  in  the  Free-State  cause  in 
Kansas.  Mr.  Forbes  sympathized  with  the  Northern  settlers  in 
their  brave  struggle,  but,  as  an  important  officer  in  the  new  Hanni- 
bal and  St.  Joseph  Railroad,  in  Missouri,  could  not  show  this 
openly.  He,  however,  invited  Brown  out  to  Milton  to  spend  the 
night,  and  gathered  his  good  neighbours  to  hear  his  story  of  the 
Kansas  bloody  persecutions.  He  gave  Brown  one  hundred  dol- 
lars for  use  in  the  Free-State  cause,  little  knowing  of  the  use  he 
would  make  of  it  for  his  secret  Virginia  plans  in  a  few  weeks. 

Brown  had  to  go  by  a  very  early  train.  In  a  letter  written  soon 
after,  Mr.  Forbes  tells  that  when  the  parlour  girl  rose  early  to 
open  the  house,  "she  was  startled  by  finding  the  grim  old  soldier 
sitting  bolt  upright  in  the  front  entry,  fast  asleep;  and  when  her 

*  Printed  in  Society  and  Solitude, 


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203 


light  awoke  him,  he  sprang  up  and  put  his  hand  into  his  breast- 
pocket, where,  I  have  no  doubt,  his  habit  of  danger  led  him  to 
carry  a  revolver."  He  then  mentions  how,  by  an  odd  chance, 
the  very  next  day  Governor  Stewart,  the  pro-slavery  Governor 
of  Missouri  (who  had  set  a  price  of  ^3,250  on  John  Brown's  head), 
"appeared  on  railroad  business,  and  he  too  passed  the  night  at 
Milton,  little  dreaming  who  had  preceded  him  in  my  guest  room." 

In  this  year  Governor  Banks  appointed  Judge  Hoar  a  justice 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts. 

August  brought  an  anniversary  promising  in  its  kind,  and 
happy  in  its  celebration.  Fifty  years  had  made  good  the  record 
of  the  son  whose  birth  his  Reverend  father  had  so  unappreciatively 
entered  in  his  journal.  Yet  the  love  and  honour  felt  for  Holmes 
in  1859  the  more  than  a  third  of  a  century  of  life  still  before  him 
was  to  increase. 

Longfellow  writes  in  his  journal:  "Drove  up  to  town  to  dine  with 
Dr.  Holmes's  friends  on  his  fiftieth  birthday.  Felton  presided. 
A  delightful  dinner.  Holmes  made  a  charming  little  speech  with 
some  verses  at  the  end  to  round  it  off;  after  which  I  came  away, 
having  to  drive  back  to  Nahant." 

Mr.  Emerson  had  evidently  been  asked  to  make  the  address, 
which  he  read,  as  follows:  — 

"Mr.  President,  —  When  I  read  the  Atlantic^  I  have  had  much 
to  think  of  the  beneficence  of  wit,  its  vast  utility;  the  extreme 
rarity  —  out  of  this  presence  —  of  the  pure  article.  Science  has 
never  measured  the  immense  profundity  of  the  Dunce-power.  The 
globe  of  the  world  —  the  diameter  of  the  solar  system  —  is  noth- 
ing to  it.  Everywhere,  a  thousand  fathoms  of  sandstone  to  a  tea- 
spoonful  of  wit.  And  yet  people  speak  with  apprehension  of  the 
dangers  of  wit,  as  if  there  were  or  could  be  an  excess. 

"We  all  remember,  in  1849,  it  was  thought  California  would 
make  gold  so  cheap  that  perhaps  it  would  drive  lead  and  zinc 
out  of  use  for  covering  roofs  and  sink-spouts,  but  here  we  have 
had  a  Mississippi  River  of  gold  pouring  in  from  California,  Aus- 
tralia, and  Oregon  for  ten  years,  and  all  has  not  yet  displaced 
one  pewter  basin  from  our  kitchens,  and  I  begin  to  believe  that 
if  Heaven  had  sent  us  a  dozen  men  as  electrical  as  Voltaire  or 


2  04  "The  Saturday  Club 

Sidney  Smith,  the  old  Dulness  would  hold  its  ground,  and  die 
hard. 

"Why,  look  at  the  fact.  Whilst,  once,  wit  was  extremely  rare 
and  sparse-sown,  —  rare  as  cobalt,  rare  as  platina,  —  here  comes 
the  Doctor  and  flings  it  about  like  sea-sand,  threatens  to  make  it 
common  as  newspapers,  is  actually  the  man  to  contract  to  fur- 
nish a  chapter  of  Rabelais  or  Sidney  Smith  once  a  month  — 
bucketfuls  of  Greek  fire  against  tons  of  paunch  and  acres  of 
bottom.  Of  course  the  danger  was  that  he  would  throw  out  of 
employment  all  the  dunces,  the  imposters,  the  slow  men,  the 
stock  writers;  in  short,  all  the  respectabilities  and  professional 
learning  of  the  time.  No  wonder  the  world  was  alarmed.  And 
yet  the  old  House  of  Unreason  stands  firm  at  this  day,  when  he 
is  fifty  years  old,  and  he  is  bound  to  live  a  hundred  in  order  to 
spend  the  half  of  his  treasure. 

"Sir,  I  have  heard  that  when  Nature  concedes  a  true  talent,  she 
renounces  for  once  all  her  avarice  and  parsimony,  and  gives  with- 
out stint.  Our  friend  here  was  born  in  happy  hour,  with  consent- 
ing stars.  I  think  his  least  merits  are  not  small.  He  is  the  best 
critic  who  constructs.  Here  is  the  war  of  dictionaries  in  this  coun- 
try. In  England,  a  philological  commission  to  draft  a  new  lexi- 
con. All  very  well;  but  the  real  dictionary  is  the  correct  writer, 
who  makes  the  reader  feel,  as  our  friend  does,  the  delicacy  and 
inevitableness  of  every  word  he  uses,  and  whose  book  is  so  charm- 
ing that  the  reader  has  never  a  suspicion,  amid  his  peals  of  laughter, 
that  he  is  learning  the  last  niceties  of  grammar  and  rhetoric. 

"What  shall  I  say  of  his  delight  in  manners,  in  society,  inele- 
gance, —  in  short,  of  his  delight  in  Culture,  which  makes  him  a 
clvlllzer  whom  every  man  and  woman  secretly  thanks  for  valu- 
able hints.'* 

"What,  then,  of  his  correction  of  popular  errors  in  taste,  In 
behaviour,  in  the  uncertain  sciences,  and  in  theology,  attested 
by  the  alarm  of  the  synods.'' 

"And  this  is  only  possible  to  the  man  who  has  the  capital  merit 
of  healthy  perception,  who  can  draw  all  men  to  read  him;  whose 
thoughts  leave  such  cheerful  and  perfumed  memories,  that  when 
the  newsboy  enters  the  car,  all  over  the  wide  wilderness  of  Amer- 


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ica,  the  tired  traveller  says,  'Here  comes  the  Autocrat  to  bring  me 
one  half-hour's  absolute  relief  from  the  vacant  mind.' 

"Now,  when  a  man  can  render  this  benefit  to  his  country,  or 
when  men  can,  I  cannot  enter  into  the  gay  controversy  between 
the  rival  Helicons  of  Croton  and  Cochituate,  but  I  desire  all  men 
of  sense  to  come  into  a  Mutual  Admiration  Society,  and  to  honour 
that  power.  The  heartier  the  praise,  the  better  for  all  parties. 
For,  really,  this  is  not  praise  of  any  man.  I  admire  perception 
wherever  it  appears.  That  is  the  one  eternal  miracle.  I  hail  the 
blessed  mystery  with  ever  new  delight.  It  lets  me  into  the 
same  joy.  Who  is  Wendell  Holmes.''  If  it  shines  through  him,  it 
is  not  his,  it  belongs  to  all  men,  and  we  hail  it  as  our  own." 

In  October,  Charles  Sumner  —  after  three  years  of  suffering 
and  disability  and  the  enduring  of  very  painful  treatment  in  Paris 
in  the  endeavour  of  Dr.  Brown-Sequard  to  restore  his  nervous 
system  from  the  disastrous  effects  upon  it  of  the  brutal  assault 
on  him  in  the  Senate  Chamber — returned  to  America  *'a  well 
man,"  and  was  soon  to  become  a  member  of  the  Club. 

At  the  end  of  that  month  the  Country  was  thrown  into  a  state 
of  great  political  excitement,  portending,  and  hastening,  the  great 
conflict  that  was  to  follow  so  soon  —  John  Brown's  raid  in  Vir- 
ginia and  seizure  of  the  United  States  Arsenal  at  Harper's  Ferry. 
This  act  of  desperate  courage,  and  of  treason,  undertaken  by  a 
few  men  for  humanity  at  the  bidding  of  their  consciences,  moved 
many  Northern  men;  but  especially  did  so  the  wounded  John 
Brown's  constancy  and  dignity  during  his  trial  and,  at  the  end, 
his  simple  and  high  statement  of  his  motives,  surpassing  Lincoln's 
Gettysburg  Speech.  ^   Mr.  Emerson  spoke  in  public  on  his  behalf; 

^  Because  of  the  interest  of  many  of  our  members  in  John  Brown's  character  and  his 
unselfish  fight  against  human  slavery  for  years;  ako  because  Redpath's  Life  of  Brown  is 
now  rarely  seen  or  read,  I  here  introduce  the  greater  part  of  his  final  speech  in  Court:  — 

"Had  I  interfered  in  the  manner  which  I  admit,  and  which  I  admit  has  been  fairly 
proved  .  .  .  had  I  so  interfered  in  behalf  of  the  rich,  the  powerful,  the  so-called  great, 
or  in  behalf  of  any  of  their  friends,  either  father,  mother,  brother,  sister,  wife,  or  children, 
or  any  of  that  class,  and  suffered  and  sacrificed  what  I  have  in  this  interference  —  it  would 
have  been  all  right,  and  every  man  in  this  Court  would  have  deemed  it  an  act  worthy  of 
reward  rather  than  punishment.  This  court  acknowledges,  as  I  suppose,  the  validity  of 
the  law  of  God.  .  .  .  That  teaches  me  that  all  things  'whatsoever  I  would  that  men  should 
do  unto  me  I  should  do  even  so  to  them.'  It  teaches  me  further,  to  'remember  them  that 
are  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them.'  I  endeavoured  to  act  up  to  that  instruction.  I  say  I  am 


2o6  'The  Saturday  Club 

■  ■■■■■     I  I     ■  ■  '■-■  '  ■'  ■  '  ■  II  ^iw  ■  ■  ■»  ^^  ^-  ■         -  m 

Governor  Andrew  was  counsel  for  one  of  his  men,  and  Dr.  Howe 
was  probably  one  of  the  few  men  in  a  general  way  aware  that 
Brown  had  some  such  aggressive  plan  in  mind.  Howe's  impatient 
spirit  and  early  ventures  as  a  militant  Christian  and  patriot, 
and  active  helper  of  the  helpless,  made  him  look  forward  to  some 
armed  attack  upon  Slavery,  instead  of  tolerating  Border  Rufhan 
outrages  upon  Freedom  such  as  had  been  allowed  in  Kansas  by 
President  Pierce  during  his  administration. 

Hawthorne,  who  had  gladly  resigned  his  ofhce  as  Consul  at 
Liverpool  in  1851,  had  with  his  family  lived  first  in  Florence,  and, 
in  the  autumn  of  1858,  they  went  to  Rome  for  the  winter.  There 
his  daughter  was  dangerously  sick  with  malarial  fever,  so,  as  soon 
as  they  were  able,  they  moved  to  England  in  the  summer  of  1859. 
They  were  at  first  at  Leamington,  and  later  moved  to  Redcar  on 
the  east  coast,  where  they  passed  the  winter.  The  Marble  Faun 
possessed  Hawthorne's  brain,  and  he  worked  out  the  romance 
during  the  winter.  He  had  been  apprised  of  his  election  to  the 
Club  in  the  summer  or  autumn,  but  he  did  not  come  until  the 
next  summer. 

As  usual  when  November's  long  evenings  came,  the  lecture 
courses  began,  and  several  of  our  members  found  a  hearing  near 
or  afar.  In  this  year,  Whipple  began,  in  the  Lowell  Institute,  his 
course  on  "Literature  of  the  Age  of  Queen  Elizabeth." 

yet  too  young  to  understand  that  God  is  any  respecter  of  persons.  I  believe  that  to  have 
interfered  as  I  have  done,  as  I  have  always  freely  admitted  I  have  done,  in  behalf  of  His 
despised  poor,  was  not  wrong,  but  right. 

"Now,  if  it  is  deemed  necessary  that  I  should  forfeit  my  life  for  the  furtherance  of 
justice,  and  mingle  my  blood  further  with  the  blood  of  my  children  and  with  the  blood  of 
millions  in  this  slave  country  whose  rights  are  disregarded  by  wicked,  cruel,  and  unjust 
enactments  —  I  submit:  so  let  it  be  done." 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 

In  the  fourth  year  after  the  birth  of  the  Club,  three  new  members 
were  chosen,  well  chosen,  —  strangely  differing  types  of  men,  but 
for  that  very  reason,  as  adding  romance,  wit,  energetic  virtue  duly 
tempered  by  tact,  this  tripod-stay  reenforced  the  quality,  charm, 
stability  of  this  institution. 

First  on  the  list  was  Hawthorne,  but  lately  returned  from 
Liverpool  and  Manchester,  corrected  by  Rome  and  Florence,  to 
his  Concord  home  snugly  placed  under  the  southeasterly  slope 
sheltering  the  Boston  Road  for  its  first  mile  from  the  village,  and 
looking  over  a  broad  expanse  of  meadows  to  Walden  afar.  There, 
like  his  neighbour,  the  woodchuck,  with  his  second  hole  for  safety, 
he  rejoiced  in  his  back  door  which  gave  him  secure  flight  to  the 
birch  and  pitch-pine  grove  on  the  hill.  Here  was  the  peace  of 
solitude  after  the  years  of  unsuitable  office  work  or  insistent  cul- 
tivated society.  Almost  certainly  it  was  a  shock  to  him  when  he 
learned  in  England,  months  before  his  return  home  (June,  i860), 
if  our  records  are  right,  that  he  was  chosen  a  member.  He  had 
tarried  there,  after  leaving  Italy,  for  nearly  a  year  working  on  the 
Marble  Faun.  Very  likely  his  friends  hoped  by  this  token  of  re^ 
gard  to  lure  him  home.  Mrs.  Fields  tells  a  story  which  shows  that 
the  solitary  romancer  had  hesitated  before  taking  the  plunge.  Mr. 
Fields,  as  publisher,  necessarily  had  advantages  in  coming  into 
relations  even  with  such  shy  authors  as  Hawthorne  and  Whlttler, 
and  his  geniality  and  his  wife's  charming  hospitality  won  them  to 
come  to  their  pleasant  home  where  they  were  likely  to  meet  the 
next-door  neighbour  Dr.  Holmes.  The  lady  says:  "He  met  Haw- 
thorne for  the  first  time,  I  think.  In  this  Informal  way.  Holmes 
had  been  speaking  of  Renan,  whose  books  Interested  him.  Sud- 
denly turning  to  Hawthorne,  he  said,  'By  the  way,  I  would  write 
a  new  novel  if  you  were  not  in  the  field,  Mr.  Hawthorne.'  '  I  am 
not,'  said  Hawthorne,  'and  I  wish  you  would  do  it.'  There  was  a 
moment's  silence.  Holmes  said  quickly,  *I  wish  you  would  come 
to  the  Club  oftener.'  'I  should  like  to,'  said  Hawthorne,  'but  I 


2o8  "The  Saturday  Club 

can't  drink.'  'Neither  can  I.'  'Well,  but  I  can't  eat.'  'Never- 
theless, we  should  like  to  see  you.'  'But  I  can't  talk,  either,' 
after  which  there  was  a  shout  of  laughter.  Then  said  Holmes, 
*You  can  listen^  though;  and  I  wish  you  would.'"  Holmes  had 
his  desire;  Hawthorne  at  Club  ate  his  dinner  and  mainly  listened. 
I  think  it  was  Fields  who  said,  "A  hundred  years  ago  Henry 
Vaughan  seems  almost  to  have  anticipated  Hawthorne's  appear- 
ance when  he  wrote  that  beautiful  line,  — 

*  Feed  on  the  vocal  silence  of  his  eye.' " 

Norton  said  that,  in  choosing  seats  at  table,  Hawthorne  tried  to 
put  himself  under  Longfellow's  protection,  or  Emerson's. 

It  should  be  in  the  natural  order  of  things  to  place  before  the 
Exodus  of  this  spinner  of  rare  webs  from  his  retired  lodge,  his 
Genesis.   A  poet  had  thus  described  it,  years  earlier:  — 

"When  Nature  created  him,  clay  was  not  granted 
For  making  as  full-sized  a  man  as  she  wanted, 
So,  to  fill  out  her  model,  a  little  she  spared 
Of  some  finer-grained  stuff  for  a  woman  prepared, 
And  she  could  not  have  hit  a  more  excellent  plan 
For  making  him  fully  and  perfectly  man."  ^ 

In  picturing  the  members  of  the  Club  whose  fame  has  caused 
their  stories  to  be  most  often  told,  it  would  seem  impertinent  here 
to  follow  closely  the  thread  of  their  lives. 

But  in  considering  Hawthorne's  ruling  solitary  instinct  in  con- 
nection with  inevitable  social  life,  certain  points  may  be  brought 
up.  First,  we  find  the  boy  of  fourteen,  an  awakening  period,  his 
father  just  dead,  brotherless,  and  with  his  widowed  mother  and 
one  sister,  withdrawn  from  a  busy  seaport  town  to  a  lonely  spot 
in  Maine  on  the  shores  of  Sebago  Lake.  Skating  alone  late  in  the 
evening  on  its  ringing  ice  among  the  dark  hills  or  wandering  in 
the  afternoons  in  the  forest,  the  boy  came  face  to  face  with  his 
soul,  and  with  Nature,  too,  before  he  was  plunged  among  college 
boys.  He  said  later,  "It  was  there  that  I  first  got  my  accursed 
habit  of  solitude."  Yet  it  is  hard  to  think  that  he  did  not,  in 
other  mood,  rejoice  in  those  days. 

At  Bowdoin,  Longfellow  was  his  classmate,  but  their  temper- 

1  Lowell,  in  "A  Fable  for  Critics." 


m 


'*Hf' 


■^liim.. 


'5.^e^o|aq.fc 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  209 

aments  differed  so  widely  that  he  was  never  a  crony,  as  were 
Horatio  Bridge,  Cilley,  and  (though  in  an  upper  class)  Franklin 
Pierce.  These  seem  to  have  initiated  the  boy  into  a  probably 
rather  mild  conviviality  with  some  fair  Madeira,  and  thus  brought 
him  out  of  his  shell.  We  are  told  that  Hawthorne,  still  a  boy, 
said  to  his  mother  that  he  would  not  get  his  living  by  the  diseases, 
the  quarrels,  or  the  sins  of  men,  so  the  author's  profession  was  the 
only  one  open  to  him.  He  gratefully  gives  to  Bridge,  after  the 
Twice-Told  Tales  came  out,  the  credit  of  his  becoming  an  author, 
first,  by  his  faith  in  his  writing;  later,  by  his  early  aid  Hawthorne's 
name  was  brought  more  prominently  before  the  public  than  there- 
tofore. 

Bridge  says  of  Hawthorne,  "Though  taciturn,  he  was  invari- 
ably cheerful  with  his  chosen  friends,  and  there  was  much  more 
of  fun  and  frolic  in  his  disposition  than  his  published  writings 
indicate."  He  also  speaks  of  his  "absolute  truthfulness,  loyalty 
to  his  friends,  abhorrence  of  debt,  great  physical  as  well  as  moral 
courage,  and  a  high  and  delicate  sense  of  honour,"  and,  in  that 
connection,  vouches  for  the  remarkable  tale  of  the  young  paladin, 
moved  by  a  lady's  complaint  of  rudeness  or  wrong  from  one  of 
his  friends,  journeying  to  Washington  to  fight  him  in  her  cause. 
Happily  the  matter  was  easily  cleared  up  without  blood. 

Hon.  Robert  Rantoul  has  iindly  contributed  the  following 
memories  to  this  sketch:  — 

"Of  Hawthorne  I  had  some  personal  knowledge.  He  frequented 
my  father's  office.  I  came  to  Salem  as  a  denizen  in  1856,  and  in 
1865  I  became  Collector  of  the  Port.  Naturally  the  place  was 
redolent  of  'Hawthorne'  tradition.  The  barrels  of  papers  in  the 
Custom-House  attic,  in  which  he  professed  to  have  discovered 
the  '  Scarlet  Letter,'  remained  in  statu  quo^  • —  undisturbed  in 
my  day.  The  delightful  tale  of  his  old  neighbour  and  landlord, 
Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin  Brown,  was  not  worn  threadbare  then. 
Hawthorne  told  Dr.  Brown,  —  they  were  fellow-Democrats  and 
Hawthorne  hired  his  near-by  house  of  the  Doctor,  and  fled  to  him, 
by  the  back  door,  for  refuge  when  cornered  by  an  unwelcome  caller, 
—  Hawthorne  told  Dr.  Brown  that  of  course  he  had  the  'Scarlet 
Letter'  and  would  show  it  to  him  some  day.    Pressed  repeatedly 


2IO 


The  Saturday  Club 


to  'make  good,'  he  finally  said:  'Well,  Doctor,  I  did  have  it,  but 
one  Sunday  afternoon,  when  we  were  all  away  at  meeting,  the 
children  got  it  and  threw  it  into  the  fire.' 

"  When  Sir  James  Barrie  was  in  Salem,  it  devolved  upon  me 
to  show  him  about.  He  was  wholly  unprepared  to  find  that  there 
was  such  a  piece  of  legislation  on  the  statute  books  as  the  '  Scarlet 
Letter'  law.  I  showed  him  the  Colonial  statute  in  the  original 
type.  He  had  thought  of  it,  up  to  that  time,  only  as  a  creation  of 
Hawthorne's  fancy.  Another  bit  of  realism  in  Hawthorne  always 
interested  me.  The  'Eastern  Land  Claim,'  which  figures  so  largely 
in  the  Seven  Gables^  was  an  actual  claim  existing  in  his  family  for 
more  than  a  century,  and  purporting  to  vest  in  'the  heirs  of  John 
Hathorn,  merchant,  Esquire,'  a  considerable  tract  'lying  be- 
tween Dammaris  Cotta  and  Sheep's  Cutt  Rivers,  by  the  inley 
Winnegance  and  the  Sea.'  Robin  Hood,  an  Indian  Sagamore, 
made  a  deed  of  it,  recorded  in  our  registry  in  1666."  ^ 

It  was  surely  a  strange  fall  of  the  dice  that  made  Hawthorne  an 
ofiicial  in  the  customs  and  consular  services  of  the  Government, 
varied  and  exacting,  for  a  large  fraction  of  his  adult  life.  And 
almost  equally  strange  seems  his  early  volunteering  in  experimental 
community  life.  In  the  last,  however,  he  found  sustenance,  for 
the  time,  and  much  to  gratify  his  sense  of  humour;  also  material 
for  a  romance  which  is  mistaken  for  a  history. 

After  that  episode,  when  Hawthorne,  newly  married,  had  come 
to  Concord  for  a  time,  Emerson  notes :  "Hawthorne  boasts  that 
he  lived  at  Brook  Farm  during  its  heroic  age;  then  all  were  inti- 
mate and  each  knew  the  other's  work;  priest  and  cook  conversed 
at  night  of  the  day's  work.  Now  they  complain  that  they  are  sepa- 
rated and  such  intimacy  cannot  be;  there  are  a  hundred  souls." 

The  kindly  respect  for  each  other  of  the  two  who,  in  different 
degrees,  prized  their  solitude,  always  existed,  yet  they  seldom 
really  met.  Once,  in  all  the  years,  there  was  a  success  when  Emer- 
son, in  the  ripeness  of  September,  invited  this  new  acquaintance 
to  join  him  in  a  two  days'  walking  excursion. 

^  Other  allusions  to  Hawthorne  as  a  Salem  citizen  and  as  a  United  States  Custom- 
House  official  may  be  found  in  Mr.  Rantoul's  article  on  The  Poet  of  Salem  in  vol.  x  of  the 
Essex  Institute's  Historical  Collection  for  1 870. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  211 

Of  this  pleasant  sauntering  in  golden-rod  season,  between  the 
orchards  where  the  apple-heaps  lay,  or  under  green  pines  and  red 
maples,  Emerson  wrote  to  Ward,  on  the  last  day  of  September, 
1842:  "Hawthorne  and  I  visited  the  Shakers  at  Harvard,  made 
ourselves  very  much  at  home  with  them,  conferred  with  them  on 
their  faith  and  practice,  took  all  reasonable  liberties  with  the 
brethren,  found  them  less  stupid  and  more  honest  than  we  looked 
for,  found  even  some  humour,  and  had  our  fill  of  walking  and  sun- 
shine," 

This  word  of  praise  of  Hawthorne's  work,  usually  all  too  gloomy 
for  Emerson's  liking,  is  worth  recording  in  that  same  year:  "Not 
until  after  our  return  did  I  read  his  'Celestial  Railroad'  which  has 
a  serene  strength  which  we  cannot  afford  not  to  praise  in  this  low 
life." 

The  words  of  two  geniuses  of  the  place  may  also  find  room  here. 

Emerson  writes  in  his  journal:  "Ellery  Channing  made  me 
laugh  very  heartily  one  day  with  equivocal  compliments  to  Haw- 
thorne: 'that  he  had  the  undeniable  test-faculty  of  narration, 
one  event  to  every  one  hundred  and  forty  pages;  a  cough  took  up 
ten  pages,  and  sitting  down  in  a  chair  six  more.' " 

And  Thoreau,  teaching  in  Staten  Island  in  that  same  summer, 
wrote  in  a  home  letter:  "Hawthorne,  too,  I  remember  as  one  with 
whom  I  sauntered,  in  old  heroic  times,  along  the  banks  of  the 
Scamander,  amid  the  ruins  of  chariots  and  heroes.  Tell  him  not 
to  desert,  even  after  the  tenth  year." 

When,  under  Emerson's  guidance,  Hawthorne  came  into  the 
Club's  dining-room  at  Parker's,  he  probably  hardly  knew  any- 
body there  except  his  classmate  Longfellow  and  Whipple; 
Lowell  and  Holmes  perhaps  slightly,  and,  of  course,  during  his 
two  short  residences  in  Concord  he  must  have  met  Judge  Hoar. 
Longfellow,  when  a  young  professor  of  Belle s-Lettres  at  Harvard, 
had  generously  and  eagerly  called  an  indifferent  public's  atten- 
tion to  Twice-Told  Tales.  Fields  tells  the  following  story  showing 
that  Hawthorne  had  been  drawn  under  Longfellow's  hospitable 
roof  early  :  "Hawthorne  dined  one  day  with  Longfellow,  and 
brought  with  him  a  friend  from  Salem.  After  dinner  the  friend 
said : '  I  have  been  trying  to  persuade  Hawthorne  to  write  a  story, 


212 


'The  Saturday  Club 


based  upon  a  legend  of  Acadle,  and  still  current  there;  a  legend  of 
a  girl  who,  in  the  dispersion  of  the  Acadians,  was  separated  from 
her  lover,  and  passed  her  life  in  waiting  and  seeking  for  him,  and 
only  found  him  dying  in  a  hospital,  when  both  were  old.'  Long- 
fellow wondered  that  this  legend  did  not  strike  the  fancy  of  Haw- 
thorne, and  said  to  him:  'If  you  have  really  made  up  your  mind 
not  to  use  it  for  a  story,  will  you  give  it  to  me  for  a  poem?'  To  this 
Hawthorne  assented,  and  moreover  promised  not  to  treat  the  sub- 
ject in  prose  till  Longfellow  had  seen  what  he  could  do  with  it 
in  verse.  And  we  have  Evangeline  in  beautiful  hexameters,  —  a 
poem  that  will  hold  its  place  in  literature  while  true  affection 
lasts.  Hawthorne  rejoiced  in  this  great  success  of  Longfellow,  and 
loved  to  count  up  the  editions,  both  foreign  and  American,  of  this 
now  world-renowned  poem." 

Longfellow  saw  and  ministered  to  his  friend's  owl-like  instinct, 
when,  from  far  Lenox,  or  from  Concord,  he  ventured  near  the 
crowded  city  and  took  refuge  in  the  Cambridge  mansion.  Mr. 
William  Winter  quotes  Longfellow  as  saying:  "Hawthorne  often 
came  into  this  room,  and  sometimes  he  would  go  there,  behind 
the  window-curtains,  and  remain  in  silent  revery  the  whole  even- 
ing. No  one  disturbed  him;  he  came  and  went  as  he  liked.  He 
was  a  mysterious  man." 

This  strange  Cornelius  Agrippa  showing  to  his  readers  in  his 
magic  glass,  darkly,  yet  with  a  sombre  dignity  and  beauty,  phases 
of  the  Puritan  New  England  life,  had  yet  another  side  which  they 
might  only  guess  at,  but  not  realize,  unless  they  had  had  the  for- 
tune at  ten  to  devour  the  Wonder-Book  or  Tanglewood  Tales,  or 
better,  while  playing  with  his  children,  to  have  chanced  on  Haw- 
thorne in  his  own  house.  For  something  of  the  Eustace  Bright 
of  the  Lenox  early  home  always  remained.  His  smile  when  we 
suddenly  came  upon  him  was  delightful;  for  children  were  not 
to  him  little  half-moulded  and  untamed  lumps  of  creation,  but 
rather  estrays  from  Paradise  bringing  some  of  its  airs  with  them, 
important  in  saving  the  human  man  from  corruption.  It  was  the 
unshaken  belief  in  the  winged  horse  of  the  little  boy  by  his  side 
that  kept  the  half-doubting  Bellerophon  true  to  his  watch  — 
and  thus  the  Chimsera  was  slain.     The  gloom  of  Hawthorne's 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  213 

tapestries  is  redeemed  by  the  gold  thread  that  the  child  or  the 
young  girl  brings  in.  Though  his  first  instinct  was  to  flee  when 
a  visitor  came  to  the  house,  if  escape  was  too  late  he  faced  his 
duties  of  hospitality  and  even  enjoyed  the  meeting.  His  consu- 
lar bread-winning  in  England  was  valuable,  for  through  meeting 
all  sorts  of  people  and  undergoing  public  dinners  he  was  prepared 
for  the  lionizing  in  London  and  the  more  congenial  social  life  in 
Rome  which  the  Brownings  and  Storys  made  easier.  His  debt 
to  his  friendship  with  Longfellow  he  thus  acknowledges:  "You 
ought  to  be  in  England  to  gather  your  fame  ....  I  make  great 
play  at  dinner  parties  by  means  of  you.  Every  lady  —  especially 
the  younger  ones  —  enters  on  the  topic  with  enthusiasm;  and  my 
personal  knowledge  of  you  sheds  a  lustre  on  myself.  Do  come  over 
and  see  these  people!"  In  that  same  year,  Longfellow  wrote  in  his 
journal:  "A  soft  rain  falling  all  day  long,  and  all  day  long  I 
read  the  Marble  Faun.  A  wonderful  book;  but  with  the  old,  dull 
pain  in  it  that  runs  through  all  Hawthorne's  writings." 

But  a  Hawthorne  differing  from  any  estimating  of  the  man  that 
has  appeared  —  except  that  Mr.  Fields  briefly  touches  on  this  new 
facet  of  this  rare  crystal  —  is  found  in  the  tragic  story  of  Miss 
Delia  Bacon,  ^  and  this  story  must  find  a  place  here.  This  lady 
of  keen  intelligence  and  nobility  of  character  became  utterly  ab- 
sorbed in  the  philosophy  of  the  works  attributed  to  Shakspeare. 
After  profound  study  of  Bacon's  writings.  Miss  Bacon  became 
sure  the  plays  and  sonnets  were  the  work  of  the  latter  and  his 
friends.  The  secret  of  the  real  authorship  she  believed  would  be 
found  in  Shakspeare's  coffin,  but,  unlike  other  advocates  of 
Bacon^s  claims,  she  cared  less  about  this  point  than  that  the  world 
should,  through  her  promptings  and  interpretations,  learn  the 
true  science  of  all  things,  which  the  plays  were  written  to  unfold. 
On  the  slenderest  means  she  went  to  England  to  complete  her 
researches  and  perfect  her  work  on  this,  to  her,  all-important 
service  to  the  race. 

In  poverty  and  solitude  she  worked.    When  strength  and  sup- 

1  See  Delia  Bacon,  by  Theodore  Bacon  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company,  i88S),  and 
various  mentions  of  this  remarkable  woman,  in  the  Carlyle -Emerson  Correspondence  and 
Hawthorne's  English  Note-Books  and  Emerson's  Journals. 


2  14  The  Saturday  Club 

plies  were  failing,  for  her  family  could  no  longer  abet  a  fanaticism 
which  they  saw  wearing  her  life  out,  she  turned  to  the  American 
Consul,  a  stranger  to  her,  for  aid. 

Hawthorne  read  her  difficult  manuscript  and  the  long  letters 
which  she  constantly  wrote  him.  Her  genius  he  recognized  at 
once,  but  could  not  go  with  her  the  length  of  her  conclusions. 
But  from  his  own  means  he  gave  her  aid,  —  and  this  most  deli- 
cately, —  without  which  she  would  have  perished,  and,  what  was 
more  to  her,  showed  sympathy  and  interest. 

He  procured  her  a  publisher  and  wrote  a  respectful  and  appre- 
ciative preface  to  her  book.  Through  long  months  he  gave  his 
aid  and  furtherance  and  time,  and  this  with  utter  patience,  chiv- 
alrous courtesy,  and,  finally,  forbearance,  when,  her  body  pros- 
trated and  her  mind  deranged,  she  turned  against  him,  her  chief 
benefactor.  Miss  Bacon  actually  obtained  permission  from  the 
church  authorities  at  Stratford  not  only  to  spend  a  night  by  Shak- 
speare's  grave,  but  to  open  it  in  the  presence  of  two  witnesses, 
yet  at  the  last  minute  her  courage  failed,  and  the  tomb  keeps  its 
secret.  Soon  after  this,  Miss  Bacon  had  to  be  placed  in  an  asylum 
and,  not  long  after,  gave  up  the  life  she  had  worn  out  in  her 
mission. 

Hawthorne  loved  Leigh  Hunt,  but  he  said,  after  his  return  to 
Concord  and  his  cordial  reception  into  the  Club  immediately  fol- 
lowing thereon,  "As  for  other  literary  men  of  England,  I  doubt 
whether  London  can  muster  so  good  a  party  as  that  which  as- 
sembles every  month  at  the  marble  palace  [Parker's]  on  School 
Street." 

Hawthorne  was  fortunate  In  his  unusually  happy  relation  with 
Mr.  George  Ticknor  and  Mr.  James  T.  Fields,  the  heads  of  the 
leading  publishing  house,  for  he  was  dependent  upon  his  pen 
for  support,  and,  though  firm  enough  when  occasion  demanded, 
and  with  a  proper  sense  of  his  rights,  he  was  modest  about  his 
writings  and  rather  helpless  as  a  business  man.  They  were  true 
friends  as  well  as  publishers  and  knew  how  thoughtfully  to  float 
him  over  barren  times. 

Mr.  Fields,  in  his  Yesterdays  with  Authors^  dedicated  to  this 
Club,  opens  his  notes  on  Hawthorne  by  a  paragraph  in  which  he 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  215 

speaks  of  him  as  "the  rarest  genius  America  has  given  to  litera- 
ture —  a  man  who  lately  sojourned  in  this  busy  world  of  ours,  but 
during  many  years  of  his  life 

'Wandered  lonely  as  a  cloud.' 

.  .  .  His  writings  have  never  soiled  the  public  mind  with  one  un- 
lovely image." 

Of  Hawthorne's  presence  at  the  Club  Mr.  Norton  said:  "It 
was  always  interesting.  I  was  always  glad  to  sit  by  him.  There 
was  individuality  and  difference  in  his  talk  which  made  it  very 
attractive.  I  recall  sympathetic  expressions  of  his  in  regard  to 
the  war.  His  lack  of  sympathy  with  Sumner  was  marked..  He 
disliked  his  magisterial  tone." 

Mr.  Norton  said :  "  On  one  of  the  last  occasions  when  I  met  Haw- 
thorne at  the  Club  during  the  War,  I  got  into  a  discussion  with 
Judge  Hoar  —  perhaps  about  some  doings  at  Washington  —  Mr. 
Sumner's  attitude,  or  the  like  —  and  the  Judge  was  rather  rough 
in  arguing.  When  the  controversy  was  over,  Hawthorne  turned 
to  me  and  in  his  shy  way  said,  'I'm  glad  you  did  n't  give  in.'" 
But  the  Judge  took  pleasure  in  having  Hawthorne  as  his  guest, 
with  Emerson,  in  the  drives  home  from  Waltham,  which  have 
been  mentioned  and  was  glad  of  this,  to  him,  only  opportunity, 
outside  the  Club,  of  meeting  his  shy  townsman,  attractive,  even 
if  a  Democrat. 

The  delightful  letter  of  Henry  James  to  Emerson,  after  seeing 
Hawthorne  for  the  first  time  at  the  Club  dinner,  is  reserved  for 
the  sketch  of  this  astonishing  and  witty  philosopher. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  Hawthorne,  returning  from 
Europe  in  i860,  and  dying  in  May,  1864,  belonged  to  the  Club 
but  for  a  few  years  and  these  of  increasing  feebleness,  troubled 
too  by  the  war. 

This  sketch  shall  end  with  the  tribute  of  William  Allingham,  the 
refined  and  lovable  Irish  and  English  poet:  "I  sometimes  love 
Hawthorne.  The  shy  man,  through  his  veil  of  fanciful  sketch  and 
tale,  shows  me  more  of  his  mind  and  heart  than  any  pen-dipper 
of  them  all.  What  a  pensive,  sympathetic  humanity  makes  itself 
felt  everywhere.    He  is  no  pessimist,  save  as  regards  men's  efforts 


2 1 6  T'he  Saturday  Club 


to  alter  the  natural  conditions  of  human  life,  and  the  natural 
effect  of  human  actions.  His  fixed  faith  is  that  man  is  a  spirit 
with  his  real  life  flowing  from  and  to  a  finer  world  than  that  of 
the  senses.  Sometimes  I  don't  love  him  so  well;  his  attitude  of 
spectator  ah  extra  strikes  a  chill." 

E.  W.  E. 


THOMAS  GOLD  APPLETON 

The  Appletons  were  establishing  themselves  in  Ipswich  five  years 
after  Boston  Was  founded,  but  their  adventurous  courage  was 
not  exhausted,  for  as  soon  as  the  French  and  Indian  War  was  over 
they  founded  New  Ipswich  among  the  hills  in  the  northern  forest. 
Again,  when  manufacturing  began  to  compete  with  agriculture, 
two  of  the  brothers  moved  to  Boston.  Nathan,  years  later,  inter- 
ested in  the  power  loom,  became  in  turn  a  founder,  with  others,  of 
a  great  industrial  city,  Lowell.  So  young  Thomas,  his  older  child, 
became  a  Beacon  Hill  Bostonian,  on  the  occasion  of  his  birth  in 
1812  on  the  last  day  of  March.  He  used  to  say,  "I  just  missed 
being  an  April  fool." 

Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  Life  of  Motley,  tells  of  the  happy  companion- 
ship of  those  notable  men  who  in  their  boyhood  were  neighbours 
near  the  head  of  Chestnut  Street.  They  loved  to  dress  up  as 
heroes  and  bandits  and  act  exciting  scenes  in  the  garret.  "If  one 
with  a  prescient  glance  could  have  looked  in,  .  .  .  in  one  of  the 
boys  he  would  have  seen  the  embryo  dramatist  of  a  nation's  life- 
history,  John  Lothrop  Motley;  in  the  second,  a  famous  talker  and 
wit  who  has  spilled  more  good  things  on  the  wasteful  air  in  con- 
versation than  would  carry  a  'diner-out'  through  half  a  dozen 
London  seasons,  and  waked  up,  somewhat  after  the  usual  flowering 
time  of  authorship,  to  find  himself  a  very  agreeable  and  cordially 
welcomed  writer — Thomas  Gold  Appleton.  In  the  third  he  would 
have  recognized  a  champion  of  liberty,  known  wherever  that  word 
is  spoken;  an  orator  whom  to  hear  is  to  revive  all  the  traditions 
of  the  grace,  the  commanding  sway,  of  the  silver-tongued  eloquence 
of  the  most  renowned  speakers  —  Wendell  Phillips."  In  after 
years,  travelling  divergent  roads,  the  early  bond  was  not  entirely 
broken,  though  Phillips  may  have  strained  it,  and  the  dramatic 
gift  was  still  common  property. 

Tom  had  the  fortune  to  be  sent  to  Round  Hill  School,  wonder- 
ful for  its  day.  John  M.  Forbes,  who  was  there  with  him,  speaks 
of  him  as  then  being  a  crack  archer,  —  he  kept  some  skill  with  the 


2 1 8  "The  Saturday  Club 

long  bow  through  life,  —  but  the  standards  of  character,  taste, 
and  reading  that  Mr.  Cogswell  strove  to  implant  were  a  cause 
for  young  Appleton's  gratitude  in  his  later  wandering  life. 

Naturally  he  was  sent  to  Harvard  College,  and  without  doubt 
was  an  amusing  and  popular  classmate.  When  he  graduated  in 
183 1  there  was  no  pressing  need  of  engaging  in  work  or  studying 
a  profession  immediately.  So  of  course  he  went  to  Europe,  and 
her  charm,  constantly  drawing  him  back,  prevented  his  ever 
doing  either. 

His  father,  a  successful  manufacturer,  wished  his  son  to  follow 
in  this  promising  path,  but  Tom  said,  "No,  thank  you!  Arts  and 
letters  are  what  I  care  for.  I  will  not  waste  my  life."  But  in  these 
he  did  not  succeed.  He  used  to  say  of  himself,  "I  have  the  tem- 
perament of  genius  without  the  genius.  That  is  the  unfortunate 
thing."  From  youth  to  age  the  social  instinct  and  talent  mas- 
tered him.  Eyes,  ears,  mind,  were  open  and  finely  tuned  to  all  that 
was  beautiful,  witty,  interesting.  From  this  material  his  quick 
appreciation  and  original  mind  and  wit,  sometimes  unhallowed, 
would  turn  out  a  fabric  amusing,  charming,  even  startling  to  his 
company.  Yet  his  wit  seldom  left  a  sting,  for  Appleton  was  very 
human  and  of  quick  sympathies.  A  lady  who  knew  him  well  said 
that  in  telling  a  story  of  suffering  to  her  he  choked  and  the  tears 
ran  over.  "  Don't  mind  me,"  he  said,  "  I  get  that  from  my  mother." 
Mr.  Dana,  in  his  diary,  thus  characterizes  him:  "Tom  is  the  prince 
of  rattlers.  He  is  quick  to  astonishment,  and  has  humour  and 
thought  and  shrewd  sense  behind  a  brilliant  fence  of  light  works." 

Appleton,  in  spite  of  being  born  a  patrician,  or,  at  any  rate, 
an  eques  in  Boston,  was  very  independent  of  Beacon  Street.  He 
was  the  first  young  man  in  Boston  who  dared  wear  a  mustache. 
His  uncle  William  Appleton  growled,  "Tom,  don't  come  into  this 
room  with  that  brush  on  your  lips." 

Soon  after  graduating  he  went  abroad  for  eighteen  months.  His 
joy  surpassed  that  of  a  child,  at  each  new  experience  in  England. 
"We  are  full  to  repletion  with  ideas  that  no  one  has  time  to  digest 
• —  none  but  an  anaconda  could,  such  is  the  glorious  rush  of  im- 
pressions. I  came  over  in  a  TroUopIan  spirit,  but  my  first  drive 
sank  the  cynic  in  the  boy.   I  am  in  love  with  this  my  fatherland." 


Thomas  Gold  Appleton  219 

After  his  mother's  death,  Tom  went  a  second  time  to  Europe 
with  his  father  and  two  of  his  sisters,  and  two  years  were  pleas- 
antly passed  on  the  Continent.  The  family  travelled  in  their  own 
carriage  for  the  most  part,  though  Tom  sometimes  left  them,  to 
walk  part  of  the  way,  rejoining  them  at  appointed  places.  On 
one  of  these  occasions  he  found  young  Mr.  Longfellow  of  Portland 
in  his  place  in  the  carriage.  Neither  of  them  could  see,  far  in  the 
future,  the  brotherly  relation  between  them,  perhaps  due  to  that 
chance  of  travel.  At  Mainz  they  were  detained  for  weeks  by  the 
illness  of  one  of  his  sisters,  but  In  that  time  Tom  got  more  than 
enough  of  that  remoter  fatherland.  He  detested  the  coarse  and 
guttural  language,  absurd  beds,  and  wrote  with  vigour  of  the  food. 
One  evening  he  persuaded  his  reluctant  father  to  go  to  the  theatre 
and  see  "Hamlet"  acted  in  German.  He  records,  however,  "We 
were  both  much  edified  and  the  tears  came  Into  our  Appleton 
eyes." 

One  of  Appleton's  friends,  a  lady,  told  of  his  delightful  little 
bursts  of  temper  when  he  would  allow  himself  to  run  on,  and 
became  even  dramatically  imaginative.  He  once  was  denouncing 
Germans  at  the  Club  before  Mr.  Sam  Ward,  who  valued  them. 
Irritated  by  his  amused  silence,  Appleton  ran  on  about  their 
manners,  their  speech,  their  over-praised  literature,  and  at  last 
burst  out  with  a  tale  of  a  call  made  by  his  father,  he  accompany- 
ing, on  a  German  from  whom  they  had  every  reason  to  expect  at 
least  courtesy,  but  the  absence  of  this  amounted  to  positive  rude- 
ness. Mr.  Appleton  had  never  experienced  such  a  reception  and 
hardly  knew  what  to  say,  but  Tom  said  that,  boiling  over  with 
indignation,  he  stepped  before  him  and  shouted  to  the  German, 
"Sir!  Choose  which  of  your  features  you  wish  to  preserve,  and  I 
will  take  care  of  the  rest!" 

In  1844,  Appleton,  after  having  spent  twelve  years  In  his 
"shuttlecock"  life,  —  delightful  sojourns  In  Europe,  whence  love 
for  his  family  and  Boston  drew  him  home  for  months,  —  found 
himself  full  of  tastes  and  interests  and  human  relations,  but  with- 
out a  profession,  occupation,  or  even  a  commanding  interest.  In 
the  presence  of  his  father,  active  worker  in  private  and  public 
affairs,  he  felt  with  some  mortification  his  difference  from  other 


220 


T^he  Saturday  Club 


young  Bostonians.  Yet  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  assume  du- 
ties for  which  he  had  no  taste  and  felt  no  fitness.  "And  yet,"  he 
wrote  to  his  father,  "I  cannot  see  that  a  man  improving  his 
character  and  mind,  living  modestly  on  a  moderate  income  is 
wholly  despicable.  If  he  tries  to  do  good,  and  to  find  the  truth 
and  speak  it,  I  cannot  see  that  he  is  inferior  to  a  man  who  only 
toils,  nobly,  to  be  sure,  but  still  without  leaving  himself  time  for 
much  of  these.  .  .  .  My  ambition  is  my  own,  and  it  is  as  strong  as 
any  man's,  but  it  has  no  triumphs  which  the  world  can  appreci- 
ate or  behold.  It  may  not  be  a  lofty  or  very  useful  one,  but  it  is  to 
the  best  of  my  abilities." 

So  again  the  man  with  "the  temperament  of  genius"  followed 
his  call,  which  was  to  enjoy,  and  then,  happy,  entertain  or  give 
pleasure  to  others  with  his  social  gift  or  cultivated  taste,  some- 
times also  generous  help.  But  he  wrote  in  serious  mood:  "If  an 
ardent  wish  to  do  good  and  be  of  some  use  indicates  anything,  I 
feel  that  some  day  I  shall  be  better  understood  and  loved  for  other 
reasons  than  at  present.  ...  It  is  too  late  to  achieve  strict  habits 
of  business,  but  I  shall  be  able  to  handle  my  talents  so  as  to 
satisfy  a  little  the  natural  demands  of  society  upon  me." 

So  abroad  again  he  went,  bent  upon  the  study  of  art  in  such 
time  as  he  could  spare  from  the  delightful  human  race.  He  fell 
in  with  the  young  William  Hunt  and  Richard  his  brother  and 
travelled  In  Greece  with  them  and  their  mother.  There  he  was 
proud  to  find  that  the  eyes  of  men  sparkled  as  they  spoke  of  his 
townsman  Dr.  Howe.  He  sent  word  to  his  sister  from  Constanti- 
nople, "Tell  her  the  old  enchantment  lingers  about  these  shores; 
that  Fairyland  begins  with  the  blue  entrances  to  the  Dardanelles." 
Years  later  he  wrote  in  the  Atlantic,^  "The  Greeks  made  an  ideal 
for  us  all.  Our  best  eyes  see  the  world  as  Homer  saw  it;  we  our- 
selves seem  to  have  built  the  Parthenon  in  some  lucky  dream." 

Mr.  Appleton  loved  art  and  practised  as  an  amateur.  I  do  not 
know  with  whom  he  studied.  But  late  in  life  he  very  much  amused 
the  unregenerate  youth  in  one  of  the  French  ateliers  by  his  re- 
marks and  by  his  efforts  in  the  life-class.  He  early  copied  Ra- 
phael's Madonna  della  Sedia  with  some  success.    He  made  also 

1  "The  Flowering  of  a  Nation,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  v,  28,  216. 


"Thomas  Gold  Appleton 


22  I 


water-colours  on  the  Nile,  and  at  Nahant,  his  summer  home.  He 
made  friends  of  Kensett,  Church,  Akers,  Allen  Gay,  Darley,  and 
other  artists,  and  with  William  Story  in  Rome.  He  had  a  gener- 
ous idea  of  a  critic's  function;  did  not  look  first  for  faults,  but 
had  a  quick  eye  and  a  genial  word  for  some  happy  stroke  in  a 
picture  even  of  a  painter  yet  unrecognized.  It  was  the  same  with 
books,  "He  was  a  most  indulgent  critic,  making  all  allowance  for 
the  intention  of  the  workman." 

Appleton  and  Emerson  were  both  in  Paris  during  the  revolu- 
tion of  1848,  but  they  met,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  very  pleas- 
antly on  their  return  voyage  to  America  in  that  year. 

Emerson  wrote  in  his  sea-journal,  "  In  the  cabin  conversations 
about  England  and  America,  Tom  Appleton  amused  us  all  by 
tracing  all  English  performance  home  to  the  dear  Puritans,  and 
affirming  that  the  Pope  also  was  once  in  South  America,  and 
there  met  a  Yankee,  who  gave  him  notions  on  politics  and  re- 
ligion." 

On  each  of  his  returns  from  the  European  paradise  Appleton 
found  increasing  friction  in  America  on  the  moral  issue  of  Slavery. 
He  seems  to  have  been  early  freed  from  "Cotton  Conservatism," 
his  generous  spirit  revolting  at  the  steady  encroachments  of  the 
slave  power,  and  more  at  Boston  subserviency.  Though  not  an 
Abolitionist,  he  kept  some  friendship  for  Sumner,  and  admired 
his  heroic  stand  for  Freedom.  In  the  presidential  campaign  of 
1856,  Appleton  wrote  from  Paris  to  his  father  that  if  Buchanan 
should  come  in,  and  follow  Pierce's  methods,  "we  could  not,  in 
Europe,  pretend  to  love  liberty."  The  gradual  enslavement  of 
the  North  "would  be  hard  to  bear,  but  might  make  us  more 
humble  and  more  willing  to  look  after  our  sins."  When  at  last  the 
flag  of  his  Country  was  fired  upon,  his  angry  patriotism  flamed 
out.  He  was  past  the  limit  of  military  age,  but  he  helped  his  friend 
Governor  Andrew  with  the  sinews  of  war  and  with  active  sym- 
pathy. 

But,  to  go  back  into  the  decade  before  the  war;  Appleton's 
visits  to  Europe  were  less  frequent  because  of  the  pleasure  he 
found  in  being  near  his  sister  and  Longfellow,  now  a  brother,  and 
presently  of  being  "Uncle  Tom,"  and  he  proved  an  ideal  uncle. 


222 


The  Saturday  Club 


He  had  for  some  time  a  house  in  Phillips  Place,  Cambridge,  to 
be  near  the  family,  and,  in  the  summer,  he  shared  a  cottage  with 
the  Longfellows  at  Nahant  for  coolness,  which  pleasant  and 
fashionable  resort  he  baptized  "Cold  Roast  Boston." 

One  of  his  friends  says  that  Mr.  Appleton  always  had  an  active 
sense  of  the  nearness  of  those  who  had  left  this  life.  "His  faith 
in  the  unseen  ran,  like  a  bright  thread,  through  all  his  currents 
of  thought."  This  made  him  ready  to  investigate  the  so-called 
"spiritualism"  of  Hume  and  others,  but  he  wearied  of  such 
manifestations,  as  coarse  and  material,  yet  held  fast  his  theory 
"that  the  spirit  world  is  ever  close  to  the  world  of  matter";  this 
made  the  memory  and  presence  of  lost  friends  ever  near  to  him.. 
Appleton's  interest  in  the  so-called  "spiritual  manifestations" 
brought  him  into  relations  with  the  believers.  Thus,  from  London, 
he  writes  to  Longfellow  in  1856  about  meeting  Mrs.  Browning 
and  says:  "She  is  a  little  concentrated  nightingale,  living  in  a 
bower  of  curls,  her  heart  throbbing  against  the  bars  of  the  world. 
I  called  on  them,  and  she  looked  at  me  wistfully,  as  she  believes 
in  the  Spirits  and  had  heard  of  me.  Lady  Byron,  too,  has  sent 
for  me  to  talk  about  it;  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  find  time  to 
go."  Writing  to  Longfellow,  a  propos  of  some  book  on  Immor- 
tality, he  said:  "There  seems  great  soreness  in  the  world  at  the 
place  where  soul  and  body  dovetail.  I  recall  an  expression  of  Mr. 
Theodore  Lyman  to  me,  years  ago:  'The  bother  of  the  Yankee,' 
said  he,  'is  that  he  rubs  badly  at  the  junction  of  soul  and  body.' 
As  true  a  thing  as  was  ever  said;  and  he  not  much  of  a  sayer  of 
such  things." 

Mr.  Norton  told  a  story  showing  Appleton's  strong  attraction 
to  artists  and  his  impulsive  generosity.  In  Venice  as  he  strolled 
through  the  Accademia,  he  spied  a  young  man  making  a  good  copy 
of  a  picture.  "Hullo!  hullo!"  said  he;  "that's  doing  pretty  well." 
The  young  man  flushed,  surprised  at  this  opening.  "No,"  went  on 
Appleton,  "that's  not  bad  at  all.  "  After  a  little  chat,  during  which 
the  artist  said  he  knew  he  must  be  Mr.  Tom  Appleton  of  whom 
he  had  heard,  the  latter  said,  "Look  here,  have  you  had  any  chance 
to  see  anything?  Been  to  Egypt .f"'  The  young  artist  was  pleased 
with  this  attention,  and  Appleton,  finding  that  he  had  his  family 


Thomas  Gold Appleton  223 

in  Venice,  said,  "Take  me  home  to  dinner  and  let  me  see  the 
wife  and  daughter."  He  went,  was  pleased  with  the  lady;  said, 
"You  '11  give  me  some  American  pumpkin  pie  ?  You  '11  go  to  Egypt 
with  me?"  All  went  on  an  ideal  voyage  on  the  Nile  in  a  dahaheah, 
and  later  through  Syria,  both  of  which  journeys  Mr.  Appleton 
very  pleasantly  chronicled  in  books. 

Mr.  Appleton  was  often  moved  to  write  verses  inspired  by  his 
camping  or  yachting  excursions  in  his  native  land.  Whatever  may 
be  said  of  his  poems,  his  prose  style,  when  moved,  is  charming 
and  artistic. 

He  writes  to  Longfellow :  — 

MiisTEAH,  Egypt,  February  13,  1875. 

Dear  Henry,  —  Behold  me  returned  from  a  descent  into 
Africa,  where  was  no  post  and  no  railroad,  but  only  Nature  and 
History.  I  went  as  into  a  cloud;  but,  oh!  the  silver  and  gold  lining 
of  it,  as  the  sun  or  the  moon  shone.  It  was  weird  and  wonderful, 
and  put  me  in  relation  with  Speke  and  Grant  and  the  other  great 
travellers.  I  kept  a  faithful  journal,  and  made  endless  sketches, 
all  in  water-colour.  My  friend  Mr.  Benson  was  very  active,  and 
in  oil  has  a  store  of  beauties.  He  and  his  family  have  proved  de- 
lightful companions,  and  enjoyed  every  moment;  not  a  sunset, 
nor  a  dish^  was  thrown  away  upon  them.  Oh,  that  you  had  our 
spring  instead  of  the  sulky,  reluctant  visitor  I  so  well  remember! 
Before  my  eyes  is  a  sheet  of  green,  such  as  only  Egypt  knows, 
and  set  in  the  gold  of  sand  and  cliff  which  doubles  its  beauty. 
You  must  get  Mr.  Gay  to  tell  you  of  these  wonders;  my  space 
can  do  them  no  justice. 

None  but  a  goose  can  see  this  country  and  not  feel  as  if  he  were 
saluting  a  mother.  At  Beni-Hassan  yesterday,  I  saw  Homer  and 
the  Bible  painted  on  the  walls;  and  yet  the  life  of  to-day.  These 
Egyptian  children  were  indeed  the  fathers  of  all  of  us  men  since. 
Life  here  cannot  escape  from  the  old  conditions.  Our  dethroned 
mast  (for  we  row  only,  now)  rests  on  a  semicircle  of  iron  iden- 
tical with  one  I  saw  yesterday  on  a  boat  of  five  thousand  years 
ago.  To  walk  in  the  shadow  of  such  a  date  gives  grandeur  to 
life.    Would  you  were  here,  and  we  should  have  a  poem  with  a 


2  24  'The  Saturday  Club 

fine  old-crusty-port  flavour.    I  have  shut  up  my  exuberant  Muse 
in  sonnets,  and  "my  brain  is  still  spinning  more." 

Faithfully, 

T.  G.  Appleton. 

Here,  by  contrast,  is  a  poem  of  Appleton's  with  the  breath  of 
Katahdin  in  it;  no  slightest  hint  of  quiet,  smooth  England,  gay 
Continental  cities,  or  the  ancient  East  can  be  felt. 

THE  LOON 

When,  swinging  in  his  silent  boat, 
The  sportsman  sees  the  happy  lake 
Repeat  the  heavens  which  o'er  him  float, 
A  quiet  which  no  whispers  break  — 
Then,  ah!  that  cry- 
Drops  from  the  sky  \ 
In  mournful  tones  of  agony. 

The  spirit  of  the  lonely  woods, 

Of  wastes  unseen  and  soundless  shores, 

The  genius  of  the  solitude 

In  that  complaint  appealing  pours  — 

One  voice  of  grief. 

Appealing,  brief, 

As  hopeless  ever  of  relief. 

When  evening  breathes  with  perfumed  air 

Delicious  sadness,  longings  high, 

A  pensive  joy,  untouched  by  care. 

Then  hark,  a  laugh  falls  from  the  sky  — 

A  mocking  jeer 

Floats  o'er  the  mere. 

And  Eve-born  sorrows  disappear. 

'T  is  thus  when  Nature  overhears 
Our  human  needs  of  joy  and  woe 
Too  much,  these  link  it  to  our  tears 
And  shame  us  in  their  overflow; 
That  laugh,  that  cry, 
To  us  come  nigh 
And  solitude's  society. 

Mr.  John  T.  Morse  tells  that  Dr.  Holmes  "wrote,  one  day,  to 
his  friend,  'Of  course  your  worst  rival  is  your  own  talk,  with  which 


Thomas  Gold Appleton  225 

people  will  always  compare  whatever  you  write;  and  I  do  not  know 
that  I  can  say  more  of  this  book  than  that  it  comes  nearer  your 
talk  than  anything  else  you  have  written.' "  Of  course  he  shone  at 
the  Club.  In  a  little  book  in  which  Mr.  Emerson  jotted  down  some 
notes  of  his  friends  I  find  the  following:  — 

Appleton  gave  Bancroft's  stepson/Alexander  Bliss,  the  sobriquet 
of  Arabia  Felix. 

He  said,  "All  good  Bostonians  expected  when  they  died  to  go 
to  Paris." 

When  Longfellow  offered  his  guests  green  turtle  soup,  Appleton 
asked,  if  that  was  not  "some  imitation  of  mock-turtle.'*" 

He  advised  some  young  ladies  at  Fields's  house  to  carry  horse- 
chestnuts.  He  said  :  "  I  have  carried  this  one  in  my  pocket  these 
ten  years,  and  in  all  that  time  have  had  no  touch  of  rheumatism. 
Indeed,  its  action  is  retrospective,  for  I  never  had  rheumatism 
before." 

To  the  old  collegians  proposing  a  club  to  meet  only  once  in  a 
decade,  he  offered  the  title,  ^^  Boors  drinking  after  Teniers."" 

When  it  was  proposed  to  put  a  chime  of  bells  on  Dr.  Channing's 
church-tower,  he  said,  they  might  play  "  Turn  again,  Huntington,'^ 
alluding  to  the  recent  conversion  of  the  last  pastor  to  the  Church 
of  England. 

Appleton  said  at  dinner:  "Canvas-back  ducks  eat  the  wild 
celery;  and  the  common  black  duck,  if  it  ate  the  wild  celery,  is 
just  as  good,  —  only,  damn  'em,  they  won't  eat  it!" 

Mr.  Norton  in  his  later  years  wrote  to  Horace  Furness:  "I 
fear  that  you  never  knew  the  delightful  Tom  Appleton.  His  mem- 
ory is  becoming  faint,  except  in  the  hearts  of  a  few  old  men  like 
myself.  This  is  the  common  fate  —  the  common  fate  of  the  man 
whose  charm  is  specially  social  and  whose  wit  is  the  wit  of  the 
dinner-table.  Well,  Tom,  who  was  a  true  bon-vivant,  intellectu- 
ally as  well  as  physically,  and  had  a  most  cultivated  sense  of  taste 
himself,  used  to  say  that  we  in  New  England  suffer  more  in  re- 
gard to  that  special  sense  from  our  Puritan  tradition  of  the  sinful- 
ness of  worldly  delights,  than  in  respect  to  any  other  of  the  senses. 
In  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  that  sense  has  had  its  rights  more 
carefully  preserved.    Yet  every  now  and  then  there  has  been  an 


2  26  The  Saturday  Club 

exceptional  instance  of  delicacy  of  taste  among  these  restrained 
Xew  Englanders,  as,  for  instance,  was  Leverett  Saltonstall's 
capacity  of  discrimination  of  sherries,  about  which  there  is  a  good 
stor}'  which  I  will  tell  you  some  day." 

But  it  is  not  right  that  Appleton  should  be  remembered  only  as 
a  hon-mvant  and  society  wit.  He  was  a  loyal  friend  and  a  most 
aiTectionate  son  and  brother,  and,  in  his  later  years  enjoyed  to 
the  utmost  his  Longfellow  nieces  and  nephews,  and,  after  their 
mother's  terrible  death,  the  wish  to  be  in  their  neighbourhood 
made  him  less  a  wanderer.  The  Appleton  ready  sjonpathy  ran 
through  his  life.  He  enjoyed  seeing  others  enjoy  and  arranging 
pleasures  for  them. 

Appleton  was  public-spirited  and  actively  interested  in  the 
gro-R*th  and  improvement  of  Boston.  He  was  early  one  of  the 
trustees  of  the  Athenseum  in  its  Pearl  Street  days.  The  Public 
Library  and  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  were  just  the  kind  of  ad- 
vances in  the  community  which  he  desired,  and  had  the  benefit  of 
his  services.  The  development  of  the  Back  Bay  lands  interested 
him.  As  soon  as  Commonwealth  Avenue  emerged  from  the  marsh 
he  built,  near  its  head,  a  comfortable  home  at  last,  made  attrac- 
tive by  his  books  and  pictures. 

From  !Miss  Hale's  pleasant  biography,  to  which  I  am  indebted, 
we  leam  that  Mr.  Appleton's  correspondence  for  the  later  years  was 
largely  made  up  of  letters  to  him  acknowledging  sums  for  all  sorts 
of  enterprises  from  those  of  large  patriotic  weight,  philanthropic 
importance,  or  sesthetic  attraction,  to  private  gifts  lifting  loads 
from  the  humblest  homes.  He  not  only  gave,  but  he  made  others 
give.  ]Miss  Hale  well  describes  her  friend  thus,  "A  man  accom- 
plished in  the  difficult  art  of  generous  living." 


JOHN  MURRAY  FORBES 

With  the  shy  romancer  and  the  cheerful,  unabashed  wit  and  trav- 
eller there  came  Into  this  company  of  men  of  letters,  science,  and 
law  a  man  of  a  different  stamp.  Born  at  Bordeaux  by  chance  of 
travel,  of  American  parents.  In  1814,  he  used  to  say,  "I  am  as- 
sured my  title  to  American  citizenship  Is  as  good  as  anybody's," 
and  he  Is  best  described  as  a  great  private  citizen.  What  a  force, 
and  always  for  good,  he  was  In  the  Country  was  known  to  few. 

His  father,  Ralph  Forbes,  was  not  successful  In  business,  and 
died  after  a  long  sickness,  still  comparatively  young,  leaving  his 
brave  wife  with  seven  children  In  narrow  circumstances. 

When  John  Forbes,  at  fifteen,  having  finished  his  official  school- 
ing, left  Round  Hill,  Northampton,  really  better  educated  than 
many  college  graduates,  to  be  boy  in  the  counting-room  of  his 
maternal  uncles,  the  Perkinses,  his  admirable  teacher,  Mr.  Cogs- 
well, wrote  to  his  mother:  "It  is  not  mere  length  of  time  In  which 
he  has  been  my  pupil  that  attaches  me  strongly  to  him.  A  stronger 
tie  Is  the  uncommon  worth  and  Irreproachable  character  he  has 
maintained  In  this  relation."  He  was  allowed  small  ventures  In 
his  uncles'  China-bound  ships,  and  by  careful  nursing,  his  capital, 
when,  at  seventeen,  he  sailed  for  China,  amounted  to  a  thousand 
dollars.  Russell  and  Company,  a  house  In  Hong  Kong  allied  with 
the  Perkinses,  accepted  him  as  a  clerk.  After  two  years'  respon- 
sible work  he  went  home  to  recruit  his  health.  He  was  married 
before  he  was  twenty-one  and  returned  to  China  to  settle  his 
affairs  there  and  then  make  a  home  here,  but  on  his  arrival  he 
found  himself,  to  his  dismay,  a  member  of  the  firm  and  could  not 
get  away  for  three  years.  The  four  months'  voyages  of  those  days 
in  slow  vessels  around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  made  long  and 
dull  chapters  In  eager  lives.  There  was  danger,  but  also  contin- 
uous weeks  of  quiet  sailing.  Happily  Mr.  Forbes  had  another 
than  the  business  side  to  his  mind.  In  calms,  or  trade-wind  sail- 
ing he  betook  himself  to  books.   His  taste  for  literature  was  good, 


2  2  8  T^he  Saturday  Club 

and  the  Highlander  in  him  loved  poetry  and  songs.  Copying  his 
favourite  verses  into  his  commonplace-book  was  a  great  resource. 
It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  strong  and  varied  traits  in  Mr. 
Forbes's  character  back  to  his  ancestry.  Strathdon  in  Aberdeen- 
shire, where  the  Highlands  meet  the  Lowlands  near  the  eastern 
coast,  was  the  Forbes  country.  They,  like  the  Grahams  and 
Gordons,  their  neighbours,  were  not  a  Gaelic  clan  and,  probably, 
like  many  of  the  coast  families,  had  a  dash  of  Viking  blood,  but 
they  had  intermarried  with  Highlanders,  notably  the  Camerons, 
the  race  of  Lochiel,  and  had  estates  in  various  parts  of  north- 
eastern Scotland,  but  never  far  from  the  sea.  Thus  Highland 
hardiness  and  valour,  romantic  imagination  and  love  of  nature 
were  added  to  the  Lowland  industry  and  logic,  while  Lowland 
shrewdness  and  dourness  were  corrected  by  Highland  generos- 
ity and  fire.  The  remarkable  history  of  Lord  President  Forbes 
(Duncan  of  Culloden),  faithful,  wise,  forcible,  and  humane  in  the 
troubled  times  of  Scotland  in  the  eighteenth  century, '^  repeats 
itself  with  strange  coincidence  in  that  of  his  remote  kinsman  here, 
John  Forbes  of  Milton,  in  the  nineteenth. 

Mr.  Forbes  settled  on  Milton  Hill  whence  he  could  see  his  ships 
come  and  go,  and  continued  for  some  time  in  the  China  trade, 
taking  great  interest  in  the  new  clipper  ships  which  brought  home 
to  Boston  the  first  news  of  their  own  arrival  in  China,  and  were 
always  chosen  even  by  English  passengers.  When,  in  1836,  his 
brother  Robert  Bennet  had  suggested  that  he  should  put  some 
money  into  the  new  railroads,  he  wrote  from  China  with  speed, 
"By  no  means  invest  any  funds  of  mine  in  railway  stocks,  and 
I  advise  you  to  keep  clear  of  them."  He  always  held  that  it  was 
good  advice  then,  and  in  his  Reminiscences  proceeds  to  tell  how, 
ten  years  later,  he  took  hold  of  railroads,  little  dreaming  of  the 
load  he  was  assuming  for  the  coming  years.  From  the  time  when, 
with  a  few  merchants,  he  bought  the  forty  miles  of  primitive 
strap-Iron  Michigan  Central,  till  the  latter  years  of  his  life  when 
the  great  Chicago,  Burlington  &  Quincy  system,  of  which  he  was 
president,  with  seven  thousand  miles  of  well-laid  road  connected 

*  See  in  Edinburgh  Review  (1816,  No.  li),  "The  Culloden  Papers." 


yohn  Murray  Forbes  229 

California  and  the  great  corn  country  with  the  markets  of  the 
world,  he  never  was  out  of  that  harness.  When  English  investors 
were  justly  bitter  about  the  results  of  their  American  adventures, 
Mr.  Forbes's  character  and  credit  with  the  Barings  floated  this 
railroad  through  stormy  business  crises.^ 

Mr.  Forbes  kept  things  in  their  proper  relations,  remembered 
that  he  was  a  man,  and  business  his  horse,  —  kept  it  under  the 
saddle.  Thus  mounted  he  looked  at  things  largely.  In  the  long 
struggle  between  Northern  and  Southern  civilizations  and  po- 
litical and  ethical  codes  which  culminated  in  war,  he  steadily 
played  the  good  citizen.  When  Webster  deserted  the  cause  of 
Freedom  in  1850,  Mr.  Forbes  left  the  Cotton  Whigs  and  always 
strove  to  present  the  urgent  issues  of  the  time  plainly  and  soberly 
to  his  friends,  North  and  South.  He  himself  considered  the  wrong 
and  mischief  of  slavery,  but  could  show  to  one  who  did  not,  in  the 
most  good-natured  and  clear  way,  the  practical  situation.  He 
helped  the  Free-State  men  in  Kansas,  but  had  to  do  so  very  qui- 
etly, because  of  his  official  position  in  the  management  of  other 
people's  property,  the  first  railroad  in  Missouri.  Thus  it  hap- 
pened when  Dr.  Howe  sent  John  Brown  out  to  see  him  and  tell 
the  story  and  make  the  appeal  of  Kansas,  that  on  the  following 
night  the  pro-slavery  Governor  of  Missouri  occupied  the  same 
bed,  which,  the  night  before,  had  held  the  man  for  whose  head  he 
and  the  President  had  offered  a  great  reward. 

The  words  of  one  of  the  old  partners  of  Russell  and  Company 
may  well  be  quoted  concerning  his  relation  to  business:  "He 
never  seemed  to  me  a  man  of  acquisitiveness,  but  very  distinctly 
one  of  constructiveness.  His  wealth  was  only  an  incident.  I  have 
seen  many  occasions  when  much  more  money  might  have  been 
made  by  him  in  some  business  transaction  but  for  this  dominant 
passion  for  building  up  things.  The  good  also  which  he  antici- 
pated for  business  and  settlers  through  opening  up  the  country 
also  weighed  much  with  him." 

Of  this  China  merchant  and  rising  railroad  man,  Mr.  Emerson 
used  to  speak  with  pleasure  on  his  return  from  his  Boston  lec- 

^  The  interesting  and  creditable  story  of  Mr.  Forbes's  railroad  services  is  told  by  Mr. 
Henry  Greenleaf  Pearson  in  An  American  Railroad-Builder. 


230  T'he  Saturday  Club 

tures,  some  years  before  the  Club  gathered,  —  "That  good  crea- 
ture John  Forbes  was  there,  with  his  wife,  and  brother  Bennet, 
and  they  wanted  to  take  me  out  with  them  to  Milton."  Here  was 
a  "man  who  could  do  things,"  and  knew  and  was  part  of  the  great 
doings  in  the  busy  world  of  which  Mr.  Emerson  coveted  to  know, 
and  yet  cared  for  such  wares  as  this  "transcendentalist"  was  fur- 
nishing, 

Mr.  James  T.  Fields,  before  his  own  membership,  said  that  when 
he  was  at  the  Club  as  a  guest,  soon  after  Mr.  Forbes,  proposed  by 
Emerson,  had  been  chosen  a  member,  the  advantage  of  this  fresh 
and  strong  stimulant  introduced  into  this  group  of  scholars  and 
savants  was  manifest.  His  sponsor  was  sure  of  the  success  of 
his  nominee.  He  had  written,  "In  common  life,  whosoever  has 
seen  a  person  of  powerful  character  and  happy  genius  will  have 
remarked  how  easily  he  took  all  things  along  with  him  —  the 
persons,  the  opinions,  and  the  day,  and  Nature  became  ancillary 
to  man."  Mr.  Forbes  was  very  modest,  and  singularly  tactful, 
and  his  influence  in  making  the  Club  a  point  of  departure  for  re- 
markable service,  and  in  many  ways,  to  the  Country  in  the  dark 
days  soon  to  follow,  also  in  securing  comfort,  permanence,  and 
usefulness  to  the  Club  itself,  was  held  in  reserve. 

Meantime  Mr.  Forbes  enjoyed  it  greatly,  and  always  was  pres- 
ent, if  possible,  usually  with  an  interesting  guest,  or  else  would 
bring  in  some  young  man.  For  he,  always  young  in  spirit,  liked  to 
have  young  people  about  him,  test  them,  too,  while  giving  them 
pleasure. 

The  doors  were  widely  open  at  Naushon,  his  island,  its  "good 
greenwood"  and  billowy  sheep-downs  stretching  for  miles  be- 
tween the  blue  Bay  and  Vineyard  Sound.  In  the  large  hospitality 
that  he  exercised,  beautifully  seconded  by  his  wife  and  family,  the 
widest  range  of  persons  shared,  men  of  letters,  or  of  affairs,  or  of 
science,  the  statesman,  the  poet,  the  artist,  the  reformer;  in  short, 
men  and  women  of  character  who  were  doing  the  work  of  the  world 
in  varied  ways.  The  idle,  the  selfish,  and  the  unsound  were  con- 
spicuously absent.  Also  the  beginners  were  there,  students  and 
clerks,  boys  and  girls:  children  of  old  friends  he  remembered  with 
a  loyalty  extending  over  three  generations.  None  were  abashed; 


yohn  Murray  Forbes  231 

they  were  drawn  out,  put  on  a  horse  or  given  an  oar,  or  he  talked 
with  them  quietly,  used  them  on  small  commissions,  saw  if  they 
had  courage  and  common  sense  in  such  chances  as  occur  on  land 
or  sea,  also  whether  they  could  observe  and  report  accurately. 
A  week  under  Mr.  Forbes's  roof  was  worth  more  than  a  year  at 
college  to  many  a  boy.  Every  one  was  put  on  his  mettle  by  the 
astonishing  performance  of  the  chief.  Sitting  by  the  fire  in  the 
room  full  of  family  and  guests,  all  talking  freely,  he  concentrated 
his  thought  and  wrote  rapidly  on  matters  of  great  moment  for  the 
Country  or  for  his  railroad;  then,  suddenly  looking  up,  would  call 
for  a  song,  "Bonny  Dundee"  or  "McGregor's  Gathering";  then 
for  a  set  at  "California  All  Fours."  Weather  he  Ignored,  rode 
daily  on  his  fine  horse  to  Boston  seven  miles  and  back.  Secretary 
Stanton,  during  a  visit,  exclaimed  to  Miss  Forbes,  "What  a 
major-general  that  man  would  make!"  His  yachts  were  not  for 
ornament  or  racing,  but  for  use;  often  to  speed  the  public  busi- 
ness. Some  of  his  most  important  letters  were  written  in  the  cabin 
in  a  gale.  For  him,  as  for  Csesar,  storm  and  obstacle  existed  to  be 
overcome. 

The  lightning  gleam  and  the  roaring  gale 
Sped  his  ship  to  the  bay. 

Not  only  did  Agassiz,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Emerson,  William  Hunt, 
Grant,  Sheridan,  Stanton,  Cleveland,  and  many  distinguished 
Englishmen  find  refreshment  at  the  island,  but  wounded  officers 
and  other  convalescents,  and  tired  teachers  and  householders. 

Mr.  Forbes  had  extraordinary  tact  In  conversation,  and  In  his 
wide  correspondence,  his  letters,  all  written  by  his  own  hand, 
having  a  great  but  quiet  Influence  In  matters  of  private  business 
or  public  policy.  He  wrote  or  inspired  numberless  newspaper 
articles  and  afl"ected  wholesomely  much  legislation,  but  never  let 
his  name  appear  In  print.  In  all  his  generous,  wise,  and  effective 
public  service  during  the  war  he  managed  to  keep  his  name  out 
of  the  newspapers.  " So  that  the  thing  is  done,"  he  would  say,  "it 
is  of  no  consequence  who  does  it."  Besides  important  services  to 
the  State  and  Country,  especially  in  the  unpreparedness  at  the 
outset  of  the  war,  he  did  a  great  deal  to  enlighten  the  public 


232  T^he  Saturday  Club 

opinion  in  England,  then  dangerously  favouring  the  Confeder- 
acy. He  was  the  valued  counsellor  of  three  successive  Secretaries 
of  the  Treasury  and  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  Yet  he  never 
held  a  political  office. 

His  daughter  has  well  described  his  methods  thus:  — 

"Impatient  ...  of  sloth,  incompetency,  and  above  all  hypoc- 
risy, I  have  seen  him  .  .  .  exhibit  an  endless  patience  and  long- 
suffering  with  the  foibles  most  distasteful  to  him;  so  that  a  cousin 
who  had  had  many  opportunities  of  watching  him  under  very 
trying  circumstances  once  exclaimed,  'The  most  patient  impatient 
man  I  have  ever  seen!'^ 

"He  never  liked  to  have  it  known  that  he  wrote  editorials,  or 
inspired  editors  with  his  views,  or  that  he  drew  up  bills  for  Con- 
gressmen; and  he  always  declined  any  nomination  for  office.  'Let 
them  feel  that  I  want  nothing  but  the  good  of  the  Country,  and 
then  I  shall  be  trusted;  if  it  is  fancied  that  I  work  for  any  per- 
sonal end  I  shall  lose  influence.'" 

His  daughter  said  truly:  "Perhaps  his  strongest  point  was  his 
power  of  'putting  through'  work.  .  .  .  He  never  thought  the  re- 
moval of  a  poor  official,  representative,  or  senator,  too  great  an 
undertaking.  No  political  machine  ever  made  him  fear  to  set 
about  such  a  business.  .  .  ." 

At  home  or  afield  Mr.  Forbes  reminded  one  of  the  best  of  the 
old  cavaliers  or  Highland  chiefs  in  Scott's  novels  which  he  loved 
so  well,  yet  to  high  mind  and  courage  he  added  a  democratic 
spirit.  Always  remarkably  plainly  clothed,  though  personally 
neat,  and  confident  and  human  in  address,  he  did  not  disaffect 
working-men  in  advance,  and  was  loyally  served.  His  face  was 
strong,  though  very  plain,  with  a  humorous  expression,  often 
lurking  in  its  seriousness.  His  wealth  had  no  ostentation;  the  house- 
keeping simple,  but  refined.  He  defined  intemperance  well,  as 
"eating  or  drinking  what  you  did  not  want  because  it  was  there, 
or  because  you  had  paid  for  it."  His  manifold  activities,  many 
of  them  in  connection  with  the  Club,  will  appear  in  the  general 
narrative. 

^  From  Letters  and  Recollections  of  John  Murray  Forbes,  vol.  i,  edited  by  Sarah  Forbes 
Hughes. 


yohn  Murray  Forbes  233 

I  find  this  entry  in  Mr.  Emerson's  journal  in  1869:  — 
"The  few  stout  and  sincere  persons,  whom  each  one  of  us 
knows,  recommend  the  Country  and  the  planet  to  us.  'T  is  not 
a  bad  world  this,  as  long  as  I  know  that  John  M.  Forbes,  or  Wil- 
liam H.  Forbes,^  and  Judge  Hoar,  and  Agassiz,  .  .  .  and  twenty 
other  shining  creatures  whose  faces  I  see  looming  through  the 
mist,  are  walking  in  it.  Is  it  the  thirty  millions  of  America,  or  is 
it  your  ten  or  twelve  units  that  encourage  your  heart  from  day 
to  day.?" 

E.  W.  E. 

*  Colonel  William  Hathaway  Forbes,  who  married  Mr.  Emerson's  younger  daughter. 


Chapter  VII 
i860 

Wisdom  is  like  electricity.  There  is  no  permanently  wise  man,  but  men  capable 
of  wisdom,  who,  being  put  into  certain  company,  or  other  favorable  conditions,  be- 
come wise  for  a  short  time,  as  glasses  rubbed  acquire  electric  power  for  a  while. 

Emerson 

MR.  FIELDS,  himself  not  a  member  of  the  Club  for  four 
years  more,  but  in  constant  literary  and  friendly  rela- 
tions with  members  because  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  tells  that 
Hawthorne,  in  England,  was  constantly  demanding  longer  letters 
from  home;  and  "nothing  gave  him  more  pleasure  than  monthly 
news  from  'The  Saturday  Club,'  and  detailed  accounts  of  what 
was  going  forward  in  literature."  In  these  letters,  Hawthorne  is 
often  inquiring  for  Whipple,  who,  he  hopes,  is  coming  out  with 
Fields. 

Longfellow,  on  the  1st  of  March,  writes  in  his  journal:  "A  soft 
rain  falling,  and  all  day  long  I  read  the  Marble  Faun.  A  wonder- 
ful book,  but  with  the  old  dull  pain  in  it  that  runs  through  all 
Hawthorne's  writings." 

Motley,  having  won  a  name  in  Europe  by  his  Rise  of  the  Dutch 
Republic,  begun  about  the  time  of  the  formation  of  the  Club, 
issued  in  this  year  the  first  two  volumes  of  his  United  Netherland 
and  received  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  from  the  University  of  Oxford, 
and  of  LL.D.  from  Harvard. 

Norton  now  had  launched  himself  as  a  man  of  letters  In  his 
Notes  of  Study  and  Travel  in  Italy. 

In  this  year,  too,  Whipple,  the  versatile  lecturer  and  essayist 
and  bright  talker,  published  his  Life  of  Macaulay. 

In  June,  Mr.  Forbes  was  chosen  Elector-at-large  for  President. 
It  is  interesting  to  read  his  good  estimate  of  Lincoln  at  a  time  when 
New  England  was  greatly  troubled  at  the  failure  of  their  Idealized 
Seward  to  win  the  nomination.  He  sends  to  a  friend  In  England 
a  copy  of  the  speeches  of  Douglas  and  Lincoln  in  their  fight  for  the 


i860  235 

Illinois  senatorship,  saying:  "From  such  of  them  as  I  have  read 
I  get  the  idea  of  a  rough,  quick-witted  man,  persistent  and  deter- 
mined, half  educated,  but  self-reliant  and  self-taught.  .  .  .  These 
speeches  .  .  .  show  that  Lincoln  originated  in  these  latter  days  the 
utterance  of  the  irrepressible  conflict  —  and,  what  is  more,  stuck 
to  it  manfully."  After  telling  that  Seward  had  killed  himself  by 
associating  himself  with  corrupt  politicians,  ignoring  the  com- 
ing conflict,  and  smoothing  things  over,  he  says,  "  I  think  on  the 
whole  the  actual  nominee  will  run  better,  and  be  quite  as  likely' 
to  administer  well  when  in." 

In  June,  Hawthorne  landed  with  his  family,  after  an  absence 
of  seven  years,  happy  to  be  once  more  at  home  and  free  from  un^ 
congenial  business  and  a  degree  of  public  and  private  sociability 
very  trying  to  his  shy  and  solitary  nature.  He  went  to  his  hill- 
side, "Wayside,"  home  in  our  quiet  village  still  untouched  by 
suburbanism,  found  the  trees  he  had  planted,  especially  larches 
with  their  purple  blossoms,  large  enough  to  screen  the  path 
from  the  first  corner  of  his  land  to  the  house,  and  forthwith 
began  to  build  at  the  top  of  the  house,  a  tower  of  refuge  from 
the  world.  He  could  sit,  irresponsive,  in  his  chair  on  the  trap- 
door affording  the  only  access. 

Still,  he  was  interested  and  curious  about  the  Club  which  had 
chosen  him  a  member.  He  was  most  cordially  received.  There, 
as  everywhere,  Hawthorne  was  mainly  a  listener,  though  he  would 
make  shy  remarks  to  his  next  neighbour.  Mr.  Norton  thought 
that  he  always  wanted  to  put  himself  under  Lowell's  or  Emer- 
son's protection. 

The  meetings  were  pleasant,  and  the  company  broke  up  re- 
luctantly, but  there  was  then  no  late  train  to  Concord.  Judge 
Hoar  solved  the  difficulty  pleasantly  by  having  his  man,  or, 
quite  often,  his  son  Sam,  then  a  boy,  —  later  to  be  our  associate, 
—  bring  his  carryall  and  big  black  horse  down  to  Waltham,  to 
which  a  later  train  ran.  Thus  the  three  townsmen,  so  different, 
yet  so  interesting  one  to  another,  had  a  pleasant  ten-mile  drive  on 
the  cool  country  road,  moonlit  or  starlit,  after  the  hours  at  the 
gay  banquet  in  Parker's  hot  room.  But  for  this,  Hawthorne  and 
the  Judge  would  have  seldom  met,  unless  they  sat  together  at 


236  The  Saturday  Club 

the  Club,  and  there  Hawthorne  was  mainly  a  handsome  picture 
with  living  eyes.  Emerson,  too,  though  his  chance  for  acquaint- 
ance was  better,  probably  met  his  recluse  neighbour  hardly  half 
a  dozen  times  in  Concord  after  the  formation  of  the  Club.  Fortu- 
nately the  Club  gathering  always  put  the  Judge  in  his  most  genial 
mood.  He  remembered,  too,  his  position  as  host,  and  so,  even  in 
war  time  which  soon  followed,  softened  his  asperity  toward  this 
harmless  Democrat.  Thus  the  conditions  for  his  townsmen  to 
get  somewhat  acquainted  with  their  shy  and  secluded  neighbour 
were  the  best.  Escape  for  him  was  impossible,  and  the  twilight  or 
darkness  made  it  easier  for  him  to  talk,  especially  after  a  meeting 
full  of  such  various  suggestion  and  wit. 

In  Longfellow's  September  diary  is  written:  "29th.  Breakfast 
with  Fields,  with  Bryant,  Holmes,  and  others.  Could  not  per- 
suade Bryant  to  dine  with  the  Club"  —  no  reason  assigned  for 
this  reluctance,  but  evidently  it  was  Bryant's  loss,  for  Long- 
fellow adds:  "We  had  Richard  Dana  just  returned  from  a  voyage 
around  the  world  with  very  pleasant  talk  about  China  and  Japan, 
amusing  and  instructing  us  a  good  deal."  Dana  had  broken  down 
suddenly  in  health  the  year  before  from  overwork  and  confine- 
ment, and  was  forced  to  take  his  doctor's  prescription  of  a  voyage 
around  the  world,  not  unpalatable  to  him.  On  the  fifth  day  from 
his  sailing  from  San  Francisco,  rejoicing  in  voyaging  on  the  Pa- 
cific once  more,  the  ship  took  fire,  and  burned  up  rapidly.  Happily 
an  English  ship,  bound  for  Australia,  was  close  at  hand,  and  all 
were  saved,  the  friendly  English  captain  agreeing  at  once  to  land 
the  shipwrecked  company  at  the  Sandwich  Islands,  whence  it 
was  necessary  to  return  to  San  Francisco  and  sail  again  for  Hong 
Kong.  Mr.  Adams  gives,  in  the  biography,  Dana's  highly  inter- 
esting account,  written  day  by  day,  of  the  experiences  in  China, 
Japan,  and  India.  Among  these  is  the  entertaining  story  of  the 
dinner-party  which  Dana  enjoyed  at  the  house  of  a  Chinese  Man- 
darin. When  Mr.  Emerson  came  home  from  that  meeting  of  the 
Club,  I  remember  the  pleasure  and  amusement  with  which  he  re- 
peated Dana's  story  of  that  occasion,  much  more  vividly  told  than 
in  his  journal. 

President  Eliot  says  that  Dana  helped  greatly  in  promoting 


i860  2  37 

general  conversation  in  the  Club,  a  matter  in  which  there  is  a 
sad  falling-off  in  the  last  generation.  He  was  very  strong  on  in- 
ternational law,  a  branch  which  the  oncoming  war  was  soon  to 
make  of  great  importance.  Dana  told  Eliot,  on  his  return  from 
his  second  voyage  in  both  of  the  great  oceans,  at  the  age  of 
forty-live,  that  he  was  troubled  to  find  that  the  Sandwich  Islands 
had  been  ruined  morally  and  physically  by  Captain  Cook's  dis- 
covery and  the  coming  of  his  successors. 

The  summer  had  brought  the  momentary  issues  of  the  Republi- 
can Convention  before  the  people,  though  few  could  believe  that 
secession  of  the  South  from  the  Union  was  involved.  Yet  the  rule 
of  the  slave-holders  with  constant  effort  for  the  extension  of  their 
institution  evidently  had  to  be  resisted  before  conditions  became 
worse. 

The  nomination  of  Lincoln  was  a  surprise  and  disappointment 
to  New  England  Republicans  who  knew  little  of  him. 

There  is  no  record  of  any  adoption  of  Rules  by  the  Club  before 
1875,  of  which  a  copy  exists.  These  were  superseded  by  By-laws  in 
1886. 


CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON 

In  the  troubled  year  leading  on  to  the  great  war,  Norton  was  the 
only  man  Invited  to  join  the  Club.  To  us  it  may  seem  strange 
that  his  friends  and  neighbours  In  Cambridge,  literary  and  scien- 
tific, had  not  chosen  him  before,  but  he  was  nearly  nine  years 
younger  than  Lowell,  the  youngest  member,  and  went  to  Europe 
the  year  that  the  Club  gathered,  up  to  that  time  having  been 
regarded  as  a  business  man.  He  came  home  when  the  storm-cloud 
preceding  the  coming  struggle  was  thickening.  That  year  the 
Atlantic  was  born.  Lowell  knew  Norton's  quality,  and  how  first 
the  spell  of  India,  then  of  Greece  and  Italy  had  worked  upon  him, 
and  gladly  took  his  contribution  to  the  first  number  of  the  maga- 
zine, —  his  recognition  as  a  rising  star. 

Norton  had  good  friends  in  college  among  the  attractive 
young  Southerners  and  had  visited  them  in  their  homes  and  re- 
ceived them  at  Newport,  but  he,  with  clear  eyes,  saw  the  great 
coming  Issue  in  the  country.  The  guns  of  Sumter  shook  up  the 
hot,  chaotic  mass  of  discordant  opinion.  Public  sentiment  crys- 
tallized. The  air  cleared  and  was  breatheable  once  more.  Men 
showed  their  colours.  Norton  had  not  been  an  agitator,  and  war  In 
advance  would  have  seemed  an  unspeakable  calamity,  but,  like 
his  fathers,  he  was  born  to  stand  for  Higher  Law.  Delicate  In 
health,  he  could  not  have  served  a  month  In  the  field,  but  he 
served  in  every  way  that  he  could.  In  his  two  years  In  Europe 
he  had  regained  fair  health;  he  had  learned  much.  His  outward 
and  his  Inward  eyes  were  opened  to  natural  beauty  and  the  spir- 
itual beauty  of  which  that  was  the  symbol.  Ruskln's  books  had 
stirred  him  already  when  by  chance  he  met  the  man  on  the  Lake 
of  Geneva,  and  their  friendship  Increased  through  the  years.  Rus- 
kin  even  then  did  him  some  service;  Italy  did  more.  Yet  he  did 
not  wish  to  stay  there;  first  and  last  he  was  an  American.  He 
knew  that  his  countrymen  and  women  needed  all  the  elevating 
influences  that  he  joyed  to  feel  working  on  him,  and  were  already 
awakening  to  them.    Now  he  had  turned  his  back  on  mercantile 


Charles  Eliot  Norton  239 

business  to  become  a  man  of  letters.  It  was  not  conceit.  He  nat- 
urally went  home  to  work,  as  one  scholar  more,  in  a  community 
that  needed  such.  He  wished  to  do  his  part.  He  had  already 
produced  his  Notes  of  Study  and  Travel  in  Italy,  an  attractive 
book  to-day,  showing  history-in-the-making  as  well  as  the  study 
of  the  Past,  and,  as  always  with  him,  the  ethical  goes  hand  in 
hand  with  the  sesthetic.  But  the  war,  he  held,  brought  duties 
as  commanding  to  him  who  stayed  at  home  as  to  him  who  stood 
in  the  battle  front.  In  the  depression  which  followed  the  morti- 
fying rout  of  the  Union  army  at  Bull  Run,  Norton  wrote  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  on  "The  Advantages  of  Defeat,"  to  make  North- 
ern people  rightly  estimate  the  greatness  of  the  problem,  and  feel- 
ing that  it  must  be  dealt  with  wisely,  steadily,  and  bravely,  if  the 
Country  and  the  cause  of  Free  Institutions  were  to  be  saved. 
Soldiers^  Aid  Societies  sprang  up  in  every  town,  and  Mr.  Norton 
gave  his  personal  work  at  Cambridge;  also  to  help  that  admir- 
able agency,  the  Sanitary  Commission.  He  was  one  of  those  who 
strengthened  the  hands  of  our  noble  War  Governor,  assuring  him 
of  the  joy  of  all  good  citizens  in  his  service  in  having  "  kept  Mas- 
sachusetts firmly  to  her  own  ideals,  and  himself  represented  all 
that  was  best  in  her  spirit  and  aims." 

After  the  Peninsular  Campaign,  when  the  war  began  to  drag, 
in  August,  1862,  that  indefatigable  patriot,  John  Murray  Forbes, 
saw  how  it  would  help  the  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war  to  col- 
lect clippings  from  all  sources  to  encourage  the  people  and  the 
soldiers,  and  spread  doctrines  of  sound  politics,  honest  finance, 
efficient  recruiting,  the  dealing  with  "contrabands,"  refugees, 
and  spies,  and  send  broadsides  made  up  of  these  clippings  all  over 
the  land.  Mr.  Norton  took  charge  of  this  work  with  admirable 
helpers,  and  these  broadsides  of  the  New  England  Loyal  Publica- 
tion Society  were  sent  out  once  a  week.  Country  editors  gladly 
availed  themselves  of  them,  and  it  is  thought  that  they  reached 
one  million  readers.  A  few  years  later,  Mr.  Norton  was  an  active 
member  of  the  "Committee  of  Fifty"  alumni  who  planned  and 
carried  out  the  building  of  the  Hall  on  the  Delta  in  memory  of 
the  Harvard  men  who  gave  their  lives  for  their  Country. 

In  May,  1862,  Mr.  Norton  was  happily  married  to  Miss  Susan 


240  The  Saturday  Club 

Sedgwick.  A  lady  beautiful  and  gracious,  she  made  perfect  that 
home,  already  of  unusual  charm  and  refining  influence  in  Cam- 
bridge. Every  evening  the  doors  of  that  house  stood  open  with 
widest  hospitality  to  all.  Madam  Norton,  of  the  Eliot  family, 
a  queen  in  kindly  dignity,  erect  in  her  chair,  welcomed  young  or 
old,  bashful  or  brilliant,  and  her  son,  his  wife,  and  his  remarkable 
sisters,  made  every  guest  at  home  and  brought  the  company  to- 
gether. 

Dante  Rossetti,  who  had  been  in  America,  wrote  —  a  divination 
from  its  name  of  what  the  Norton  home  was  —  "Your  'Shady 
Hill'  is  a  tempting  address,  where  one  would  wish  to  be.  It  re- 
minds one  somehow  of  the  PilgrirrCs  Progress  where  the  pleasant 
names  of  Heavenly  places  really  make  you  feel  as  if  you  could  get 
there  if  the  journey  could  be  made  in  that  very  way —  the  pit- 
falls plain  to  the  eye,  and  all  the  wicked  people  with  wicked  names. 
I  find  no  shady  hill  or  vale,  though,  in  these  places  and  pursuits 
which  I  have  to  do  with." 

Henry  James,  Jr.,  speaking  of  the  ripened  relations  which  his 
family  had  with  the  Nortons  after  moving  to  Cambridge,  in  1865, 
tells  of  "The  happy  fashion  in  which  the  University  circle  con- 
sciously accepted,  for  its  better  satisfaction,  or,  in  other  words, 
just  from  a  sense  of  what  was,  within  its  range,  in  the  highest  de- 
gree interesting,  the  social  predominance  of  Shady  Hill  and  the 
master  there,  and  the  ladies  of  the  master's  family.  .  .  .  That  in- 
stitution and  its  administrators,  however,  became  at  once,  under 
whatever  recall  of  them,  a  picture  of  great  inclusions  and  impli- 
cations; so  true  is  it  .  .  .  that  a  strong  character,  reenforced  by  a 
great  culture,  a  culture  great  in  the  given  conditions,  obeys  an  in- 
evitable law  in  simply  standing  out.  Charles  Eliot  Norton  stood 
out,  in  the  air  of  the  place  and  time  —  which,  for  that  matter, 
I  think,  changed  much  as  he  changed,  and  could  n't  change  much 
beyond  his  own  range  of  experiment  —  with  a  greater  salience, 
granting  his  background,  I  should  say,  than  I  have  ever  known 
a  human  figure  stand  out  with  from  any:  an  effect  involved,  of 
course,  in  the  nature  of  the  background  as  well  as  in  that  of  the 
figure.  He  profited,  at  any  rate,  to  a  degree  that  was  a  lesson  in 
all  the  civilities,  by  the  fact  that  he  represented  an  amplier  and 


Charles  Eliot  Norton  241 

easier,  above  all  a  more  curious,  play  of  the  civil  relation  than  was 
to  be  detected  anywhere  about,  and  a  play  by  which  that  relation 
had  the  charming  art  of  becoming  extraordinarily  multifold  and 
various  without  appearing  to  lose  the  note  of  rarity.  ...  In  the 
achieved  and  preserved  terms  of  intercourse  it  was  that  the  curi- 
osity, as  I  have  called  it,  of  Shady  Hill  was  justified  —  so  did  its 
action  prove  largely  humanizing.  This  was  all  the  witchcraft  it 
had  used  —  that  of  manners,  understood  with  all  the  extensions 
at  once,  and  all  the  particularizations  to  which  it  is  the  privilege 
of  the  highest  conception  of  manners  to  lend  itself.  What  it  all 
came  back  to  naturally,  was  the  fact  that,  on  so  happy  a  ground, 
the  application  of  such  an  ideal  and  such  a  genius  could  find 
agents  expressive  and  proportionate,  and  the  least  that  could  be 
said  of  the  ladies  of  the  house  was  that  they  had  in  perfection  the 
imagination  of  their  opportunity." 

In  spite  of  living  with  open  door  and  in  wide  social  relations, 
Norton  was  always  a  worker,  remembering  that  Horce  pereunt  et 
imputantur,  —  but  to  better  purpose  than  in  the  counting-room 
or  mart.  First,  it  pleased  him  to  edit  the  two  volumes  of  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Gospels  which  his  father  was  finishing  when  death 
overtook  him;  also  the  son  gathered  the  miscellaneous  essays  of 
his  father,  and  printed  a  little  volume  of  his  hymns  and  poems. 
Born  into  easy  circumstances  himself,  he  thought  about  the  hard 
lot  of  the  helpless  poor,  and  early  wrote  in  the  North  American 
Review  on  improved  dwellings  and  schools  for  them,  having  per- 
sonally investigated  the  shocking  condition  of  Boston  tenement 
houses,  into  which  the  immigrants  were  crowding,  almost  past 
belief  now.  His  article  was  illustrated  by  plans  of  model  tenements 
in  England.  He  urged  good  people  to  look  into  the  condition  of 
their  poor  neighbours;  recommended  the  formation  of  a  board  of 
health  and  also  sanitary  legislation.  In  Cambridge,  young  Norton 
worked  for  the  establishment  of  evening  schools,  and  himself 
taught  the  newly  arrived  Irish  settlers. 

In  some  autobiographical  notes,  Mr.  Norton  wrote:  "During 
my  years  in  the  counting-house,  a  casual  acquaintance  with  Frank 
Parkman  developed  into  a  friendship  which  lasted  through  life. 
He  was  then  printing  in  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  if  I  remember 


242  The  Saturday  Club 

rightly,  his  first  book,  The  Oregon  Trails  and  when  it  was  to  be  pub- 
lished as  a  volume  he  asked  me  to  revise  the  numbers,  and  many  an 
evening  when  there  was  not  other  work  to  be  done  was  spent  by 
me  and  him  in  the  solitary  counting-room  in  going  over  his  work." 

Once  a  week  on  Wednesday  evenings  of  1865-66,  Lowell  and 
Norton  came  to  Longfellow's,  at  his  request,  to  hear  him  read  his 
renderings  of  Dante  into  English  verse  as  literal  as  might  be,  and 
better  them  if  they  could.  They  knew  their  friend's  sincerity, 
sweetness,  and  modesty,  and  so  well  that  they  obeyed  the  rule 
given  by  Ecclesiastlcus,  "And  be  not  faint-hearted  when  thou 
sittest  in  judgment."  So  all  went  well  and  the  work  was  helped. 
"They  were  delightful  evenings,"  said  Mr.  Norton,  "the  spirits 
of  poetry,  of  learning,  of  friendship  were  with  us." 

His  own  love  of  Dante  and  insight  into  the  deep  meaning  of  the 
great  poem  were  quickened  by  these  studies  of  the  friends,  and 
the  demonstration  by  Longfellow's  magnificent  attempt  of  the 
difficulty  of  rightly  rendering  a  subtile  line  of  a  poem  in  a  Latin 
tongue  by  a  line  of  a  language  largely  Teutonic  —  especially  its 
poetic  words  —  made  him  feel  that  he  must  translate  the  Divina 
Commedia  into  faithful  and  poetic  prose.  This  he  did  later  with 
best  success.  He  had  already  made  charming  translation  of  La 
Vita  Nuova. 

Now  came  a  long  break  in  Norton's  attendance  at  the  Club.  In 
the  summer  of  1868,  he  went  to  Europe,  taking  with  him  his  wife 
and  little  children,  his  venerable  mother  and  his  two  sisters.  The 
family  remained  abroad  five  years,  at  first  in  Italy,  later  in  Ger- 
many and  England.  During  that  time  Norton  was  in  constant 
relation  with  Ruskin,  by  letters  when  they  were  not  together. 

The  first  three  years  were  most  happy.  The  family  life  in  far 
cities  in  pleasant  lands  alive  with  associations;  freedom  from  out- 
side duties,  so  exacting  at  home;  the  sense  of  the  rapid  growth  of 
his  power  to  see  beauty;  the  increasing  love  and  reverence  for 
Dante;  the  study  of  the  minds  and  aspirations  of  mediaeval  men 
through  their  works,  and  in  the  original  records,  which  he  dili- 
gently studied;  the  many  profitable  acquaintances  —  all  these 
made  the  days  pleasant. 

But  this  was  to  change.    In  the  autumn  of  1871,  Mr.  Norton 


Charles  Eliot  Norton  243 

took  his  family  to  Dresden  to  spend  the  winter.  There  the  great 
sorrow  of  his  life  fell  on  him  in  the  death  of  his  wife,  a  woman 
beautiful  in  all  ways.  She  left  to  him  six  little  children,  and  love 
and  care  for  these  were  to  help  through  the  first  darkness  of  the 
following  years.  Yet  tenderness  to  his  family  and  friends  seemed 
to  be  but  strengthened;  and  those  less  near,  who  visited  Mr.  Nor- 
ton and  his  family  in  their  lodgings  in  England,  found  in  that 
temporary  home  from  which  a  light  had  gone  out,  and  where  a 
gracious  presence  was  missing,  the  essence  of  home  still  there  — 
courage  and  kindness  made  more  real  by  the  testing  they  had 
undergone;  the  cheerful  lending  of  attention  and  sympathy  to 
others,  and  duties  done,  and  labours  bravely  pursued. 

Ruskin,  older,  more  restless  and  sadder,  was  there;  for  that 
which  was  unbeautiful  and  dark  in  life  now  occupied  this  sensi- 
tive soul  more  than  art.  These  things  wrought  havoc  with  his 
mind  and  conscience,  yet  he  would  not  cease  from  manifold  studies 
and  works.  More  than  once  his  brain  and  body  gave  way  in  the 
succeeding  years,  yet  his  friend  soothed,  counselled,  pleaded,  and 
was  his  helper,  as  far  as  he  could  be  helped,  to  the  end;  but  that 
did  not  come  for  years. 

Norton  found  a  friend  in  William  Morris,  the  dreamer  turned 
brave  worker,  but  was  especially  drawn  to  Burne-Jones  by  his 
earnest  and  thoughtful  life  and  work.  His  old  friend  Stillman,  of 
versatile  mind  and  gifts,  brave  friend  of  Greece  and  Crete  in  their 
troubles,  was  there.  But,  for  the  first  time,  Mr.  Norton  met  Car- 
lyle,  now  sad  with  a  bereavement  like  his  own  and  broken  with 
age  and  palsy.  Carlyle  visited  him  when  he  was  convalescent 
from  pneumonia,  and  wrote  of  "Norton,  a  man  I  like  more  and 
more."  Again,  "He  is  a  fine.  Intelligent  and  affectionate  crea- 
ture with  whom  I  have  always  had  a  pleasant,  soothing,  and  In- 
teresting dialogue  when  we  met." 

When  the  Nortons  sailed  for  home  in  May,  1873,  Carlyle  wrote: 
"I  was  really  sorry  to  part  with  Norton.  .  .  .  He  had  been, 
through  the  winter,  the  most  human  of  all  the  company  I,  from 
time  to  time,  had.  A  pious,  cultivated,  intelligent,  miich  suffer- 
ing man.  He  has  been  five  years  absent  from  America  and  Is  now 
to  return  one^  Instead  of  two^  as  he  left." 


2  44  The  Saturday  Club 

In  1873,  in  latter  May,  the  doors  of  the  ideal  home  at  Shady 
Hill  were  once  more  opened  to  sunlight  and  to  friends.  This  must 
have  lightened  the  shadow  left  by  his  loss  on  Mr.  Norton's  mind. 
Also  an  event  occurred  which  proved  helpful  to  him  in  the  way 
natural  to  him  —  helping  others.  The  College  close  by  was 
changed,  for  there  was  a  new  President.  That  institution  had 
offered  to  youth  a  "liberal  education"  for  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
eight  years,  and  had  created  Bachelors  and  Masters  of  Arts,  but 
the  Fine  Arts  had  had  no  recognition  except  by  allusion.  Mr. 
Norton  was  invited  to  give  some  lectures,  and  in  1875  was  made 
Professor  of  the  Fine  Arts.  Some  thirty-four  students  attended: 
when  he  resigned  in  1897,  the  attendance  had  increased  thirteen- 
fold.  He  ploughed  a  fallow  ground  and  sowed  it  for  a  crop  sorely 
needed.  Some  of  the  seed  fell  on  stony  ground,  but  the  harvest 
was  good,  and  many  were  fed,  and  saved  good  seed-corn  from  which 
harvests  elsewhere  in  the  land  were  to  spring.  The  studies  of  the 
old-time  compulsory  curriculum  used  to  be  called  "The  Humani- 
ties," and  with  reason.  Now  the  humanities  were  to  be  taught  to 
greater  numbers  than  by  Frisbie,  Everett,  Ticknor,  Longfellow, 
Felton,  and  Lowell,  and  with  a  freer  hand;  and  this  was  the  more 
important  as  the  opening  sciences  made  their  claim  good,  and  popu- 
lar feeling  for  the  time  was  unfavourable  to  the  classics. 

When  this  class  had  so  many  applicants  that  the  lecture  had  to 
be  given  in  Sanders  Theatre,  Mr.  Norton  entered,  looked  on  the 
throng  of  students  and  began,  —  "  This  is  a  sad  sight.''^  He  knew 
how  large  a  fraction  were  idle  boys  who  chose  what  they  thought 
would  be  an  easy  course.  As  his  friend  Professor  Charles  H. 
Moore  said:  "Norton  drew  aside  a  curtain  and  showed  to  thought- 
less or  immature  boys  a  glimpse  of  the  vast  hall  of  being  in  which 
they  or  their  ancestors  had  constructed  a  little  hut  and  yard,  shut- 
ting out  its  celestial  dimensions.  Norton  knocked  a  breach  in 
these  walls,  and  let  them  see  Nature  and  what  her  beauties  sym- 
bolized"; also  the  great  interpreters  of  these  as  living  teachers,  and 
the  relations  of  Poetry,  History,  Religion,  Human  Life  and  Con- 
duct to  Art. 

Norton  opened  for  these  crude  young  scholars  side  doors  show- 
ing vistas  into  the  remote  but  shining  Past,  the  deep  questionings, 


Charles  Eliot  Norton  24.5 

the  songs,  the  oracles,  and  the  wisdom  that  men  had  won,  one 
thousand  or  two  thousand  years  before  the  scream  of  the  Ameri- 
can eagle  had  been  heard.  This  gave  his  hearers  a  better  per- 
spective, which  might  teach  them  modesty.  He  showed  how  far 
from  dead  the  great  are,  and  that  they  are  wise  for  to-day,  since 
humanity  is  the  same,  and  the  great  laws  are,  in  Antigone's  words, 
"Not  of  now  or  yesterday,  but  always  were." 

The  teaching  was  ethical.  He  showed  the  sons  of  poor  men  mines 
of  spiritual  treasure;  the  sons  of  rich  men  the  responsibility  of 
having;  that  wealth  demanded  helpful  use,  and  leisure  unselfish 
work;  that  to  be  a  mere  dilettante  and  idle  collector  was  demoral- 
izing. One  must  be  a  worker  in  some  sort.  All  beauty  is  allied. 
"Behaviour  is  a  fine  art,"  he  said.  Death  is  normal;  what  is  to. 
be  feared  is  death  in  life  —  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit. 

In  more  than  he  knew,  the  leaven  that  he  put  into  the  lump, 
worked. 

Certain  criticisms  on  the  trend  of  American  activity  and  ex- 
pression, purposely  made  strong  to  command  the  attention  of 
the  young  generation,  and  recalling  Ruskin's  sweeping  dicta^  nat- 
urally excited  dissent.  These  were  his  judgments,  perhaps  too 
severe,  and  fallible;  the  steady  lesson  to  the  class  was  the  high 
plane  of  thought  and  action  native  to  the  teacher. 

And  many  young  hearers  carried  away  little  else,  yet  that  was 
worth  coming  to  college  for.  A  year  before  Mr.  Norton  died,  I 
heard  in  one  day  the  grateful  witness  of  three  different  graduates, 
then  in  full  tide  of  useful  life,  to  their  debt  to  those  lectures  in 
opening  their  eyes  to  the  beauty  and  the  high  possibilities  of  life. 
Another,  a  lawyer,  writing  from  the  activities  of  State  Street, 
just  after  Mr.  Norton's  death,  speaks  of  his  instruction  as  the 
"solid  acquisition"  he  carried  from  college,  without  which  he 
should  feel  himself  a  "poorer  man." 

But  Mr.  Norton's  relation  with  the  University  was  not  only 
as  a  teacher.  It  was  administrative  and  advisory,  and  he  made  it 
human;  for  he  was  one  of  the  Faculty,  an  Overseer,  and  for  a  time 
President  of  the  Alumni  Association.  Coming  back  from  Europe, 
where  he  had  been  in  relation  with  the  scholars,  and  at  the  foun- 
tains of  Old  World  culture,  he  was  free  from  that  provincialism 


246  'The  Saturday  Club 

which  had  so  shocked  Agassiz  on  coming  to  Cambridge,  and  which 
Eliot  had  begun  to  shake. 

In  spite  of  Mr.  Norton's  sweetness  of  manners  and  habitual 
courtesy,  he  would,  at  what  seemed  the  telling  moment,  draw 
the  weapon  of  plain  speech  and  strike,  as  the  occasion  demanded, 
a  coup-de-grace,  a  cut  of  kindness,  necessary  to  cleave  through  the 
thick  skin  of  inconsiderateness,  or  shear  away  the  blinder  of  de- 
ception. An  instance  of  this  trait  should  be  recorded.  Once  on  an 
ocean  steamer,  on  which  Mr.  Norton  was  travelling,  a  young  man 
came,  morning  by  morning,  to  breakfast,  sour  and  silent.  One 
day,  Mr.  Norton  made  occasion  to  walk  with  him  on  deck  and 
said:  "I  am  going  to  take  the  liberty  of  making  a  personal  remark 
and  suggestion  to  you.  It  is  this:  —  that  you  make  an  effort  to 
come  into  the  breakfast  room  in  the  morning  with  a  cheerful  ex- 
pression on  your  face.  You  do  not  know  what  a  difference  such 
things  make.  Your  manner,  thus  far,  has  cast  a  shade  on  the 
company  about  you,  and  made  the  meal  and  day  begin  less  cheer- 
fully than  it  should.  If  you  would  change  this,  you  would  see  a 
surprising  difference.  I  hope  you  mean  to  be  married.  You  do  not 
know  what  a  difference  such  a  practice  will  make  to  your  wife  and 
in  your  home."  The  young  man  took  it  well,  made  some  effort  dur- 
ing the  rest  of  the  voyage,  and,  years  afterwards,  wrote  his  thanks 
to  Mr.  Norton  for  having  done  him  and  his  a  service  great  and 
lasting. 

I  recall  a  Chinese  poem  which  runs  thus:  — 

"Happy  is  the  wise  r.ian  who  behind  the  mountains 
Delights  in  the  noise  of  cymbals: 
Alone  on  his  couch  and  awake,  he  exclaims, — 
'Never,  I  swear  it,  shall  the  vulgar  know  the  sources 
Of  the  happiness  which  I  enjoy.'" 

Behind  the  hills  of  Franklin  County,  Norton  had,  about  1867, 
established,  in  the  independent  little  village  of  Ashfield,  not  a 
summer  cottage,  but  another  home.  Unlike  the  Chinese  poet,  he 
went  there  feeling  that  he  must  take  part  in  its  lot,  be  a  neigh- 
bour, share  all  he  knew  with  them,  instead  of  using  them  and 
calling  them  "Natives."  Soon  after,  George  William  Curtis, 
visiting  his  friend,  decided  to  make  a  home  there,  in  the  like  spirit, 


Charles  Eliot  Norton  247 

for  part  of  the  year.  Their  good  feeling  and  wishes  were  met  by  the 
people  of  the  town. 

Both  kept  a  warm  relation  to  Ashfield  for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 
They  lent  themselves  to  its  service  in  all  ways,  and  once  a  year 
at  a  village  banquet  drew  admirable  and  eminent  guests  thither 
to  meet  the  Ashfield  people. 

Norton  was  much  misapprehended,  ridiculed  even,  in  his  day; 
not  by  those  who  really  knew  him.  Certain  mannerisms,  some 
strong  statements  taken  alone  or  misquoted;  standards  of  taste 
or  public  duty  differing  from  their  own;  ignorance  of  his  kindness, 
his  faithful  work,  and  earnest  concern  for  the  right,  led  some 
persons  variously  to  suppose  him  a  dilettante,  a  carper,  out  of 
sympathy  with  his  age  and  country,  irreligious  and  a  pessimist. 
It  is  true  he  was  impatient  of  optimism,  being  too  sensitive  to  the 
evils  of  his  day  and  the  dangers  already  looming  even  over  Amer- 
ica, results  of  low  standards  in  politics,  trade,  culture,  conduct,  to 
be  content  in  waiting  for  things  to  work  out  right  in  secular  time. 
He  felt  the  duty  to  warn  as  well  as  to  work. 

Mr.  Charles  Howard  Walker  says  of  his  revered  teacher,  "His 
pessimism,  so-called,  was  but  a  patient  sadness  at  the  spectacle  of 
the  achievements  of  ignorance,  and  his  faith  in  the  dissipation  of 
that  ignorance  grew  with  his  years  —  and  he,  if  any  man,  did  his 
utmost  to  encourage  appreciation  of  the  best."  No  passive  railer, 
but  a  scholar  who  had  read  the  lesson  of  history  and  knew  the 
wisdom,  never  outgrown,  of  the  great  spirits  of  the  Past,  he,  in  his 
day,  worked  for  the  right  with  tongue  and  pen  —  and  showed  its 
beauty.  Thus  he  was,  from  first  to  last,  an  eminently  good  citizen 
of  Cambridge  and  of  the  world. 

Surely  here  was  a  "pessimist"  of  a  new  and  useful  kind,  who 
could  find  in  his  insecurity  as  to  new  opportunities  after  death  this 
moral:  "When  men  learn  that  the  mystery  of  the  universe  and  of 
their  own  existence  is  insoluble,  that  this  life  is  all,  they  will 
perhaps  find  that  with  this  limitation  has  come  a  new  sense  of  the 
value  of  life  to  the  individual,  and  his  infinite  unimportance  to 
the  universe.  He  will  learn  that  he  can  be  a  help  or  a  harm  to  his 
fellows,  and  that  is  enough." 

Norton,  though,  like  Montaigne,  saying  of  the  Future,  '"''Que 


2  4^  The  Saturday  Club 

sais  jeV  was  not  a  man  without  God  in  the  world.  Catholic  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word,  he  respected  honest  and  devout  believers. 
Speaking  in  his  pious  ancestor's  church  in  Hingham,  at  its  two 
hundredth  anniversary,  he  said:  — 

"A  continuous  spiritual  life  runs  through  the  centuries.  .  .  . 
The  path  of  duty  .  .  .  trodden  by  the  common  men  and  women  of 
every  period,  is  the  thread  of  light  running  unbroken  through  the 
past  up  to  the  present  hour.  Creeds  change,  temptations  differ,  old 
landmarks  are  left  behind,  new  perils  confront  us;  but  always  the 
needle  points  to  the  North  Star,  and  always  are  some  common 
men  and  women  following  its  guidance." 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  VIII 
1861 

There  is  a  sound  of  thunder  afar. 

Storm  in  the  South  that  darkens  the  day. 
Storm  of  battle  and  thunder  of  war. 
Well  if  it  do  not  roll  our  way. 
Form!  form!  Riflemen  form! 
Ready,  be  ready  to  meet  the  storm! 
Riflemen,  riflemen,  riflemen,  form! 

Tennyson 

THE  New  Year  opened  with  hardl7  credible  signs  of  imminent 
war.  Five  days  before  Christmas,  hot-headed  South  Caro- 
lina had  passed  an  ordinance  of  secession  from  the  United  States, 
and  the  fire  was  spreading  to  her  neighbour  States.  Instead  of  a 
blast  of  indignation,  Dr.  Holmes  wrote  this  affectionate  appeal, 
from  which  I  select  four  verses:  — 

BROTHER  JONATHAN'S  LAMENT  FOR  SISTER  CAROLINE 

She  has  gone,  —  she  has  left  us  in  passion  and  pride,  — 
Our  stormy-browed  sister,  so  long  at  our  side! 
She  has  torn  her  own  star  from  our  firmament's  glow, 
And  turned  on  her  brother  the  face  of  a  foe! 

Oh,  Caroline,  Caroline,  child  of  the  sun. 
We  can  never  forget  that  our  hearts  have  been  one,  — 
Our  foreheads  both  sprinkled  in  Liberty's  name. 
From  the  fountain  of  blood  with  the  finger  of  flame! 


Oh,  Caroline,  Caroline,  child  of  the  sun, 
There  are  battles  with  Fate  that  can  never  be  won! 
The  star-flowering  banner  must  never  be  furled, 
For  its  blossoms  of  light  are  the  hope  of  the  world! 

Go,  then,  our  rash  sister!  afar  and  aloof, 

Run  wild  in  the  sunshine  away  from  our  roof; 

But  when  your  heart  aches  and  your  feet  have  grown  sore, 

Remember  the  pathway  that  leads  to  our  door! 


250  The  Saturday  Club 

Mississippi,  Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana  fell  away  from 
their  allegiance  in  January  and,  on  the  first  day  of  February,  Texas. 
Yet  the  North  could  not  yet  believe  what  was  coming;  that  the 
South,  having  fairly  lost  the  game  at  the  November  election, 
"would  n't  play"  any  longer.  Conservative  Boston  Whigs  were 
at  last  tired  of  being  used,  and  despised.  Almost  all  of  the  Club 
members  were  strong  anti-slavery  men,  had  voted  for  Lincoln,  and 
were  ready  as  good  citizens  to  sustain  him. 

John  A.  Andrew,  born  in  Maine,  not  of  Boston  blue  blood,  a 
brave  and  courageous  lawyer,  had  been  chosen  Governor  by  the 
largest  popular  vote  ever  cast  for  a  candidate  up  to  that  time. 
He  had  been  in  the  South  in  the  autumn  before  as  valiant  counsel 
for  one  of  John  Brown's  men,  and  had  decided  that  now,  as  com- 
mander of  the  Massachusetts  Militia,  it  was  his  clear  duty,  in 
some  measure,  to  prepare  for  war.  He,  through  the  Adjutant- 
General's  office,  quietly  had  captains  instructed  to  weed  their 
companies  of  such  men  as  were  unwilling  or  unfit  to  serve.  He 
also  had  four  thousand  blue  caped  overcoats  got  ready,  a  meas- 
ure considered  foolish  extravagance  at  the  time.  In  April,  they 
proved  invaluable  to  our  soldiers. 

Mr.  Forbes  saw  the  vigour  and  wisdom  of  the  Governor,  and, 
as  will  presently  be  told,  became  his  able  and  useful  helper,  but 
meantime  had  duties  at  Washington,  for  he  had  been  chosen  a 
delegate  to  a  "Peace  Congress."  Having  served  as  Presidential 
Elector-at-large,  he  saw  there  a  danger  that  must  be  provided 
against.  On  a  day  in  February  it  was  the  duty  of  Vice-President 
Breckinridge,  an  open  disunionist,  as  President  of  the  Senate,  to 
march  at  the  head  of  that  body  to  the  Chamber  of  Representatives 
carrying  the  electoral  votes.  Until  these  had  been  opened  and 
counted,  and  the  result  declared,  Lincoln  could  not  become  Presi- 
dent. Washington  was  full  of  traitors  with  whom  Breckinridge 
was  in  full  sympathy.  Old  General  Scott  had  hardly  one  thousand 
men  in  the  District  forts,  etc.  Should  a  body  of  disunionists  seize 
and  destroy  those  ballots,  the  Southern  party  in  Congress,  now 
desperate,  might  claim  that  Buchanan  and  his  Cabinet  still  had 
the  power.  Mr.  Forbes  quietly  arranged  with  Captain  (later, 
General)  Franklin,  who  had  charge  of  the  Capitol  extension,  to  be 


i86i  251 

in  the  building  early  that  morning  with  a  force  of  workmen,  to 
make  sure  that  no  body  of  conspirators  were  lurking  about. 
Nothing  happened  —  but  the  danger  was  real  and  of  great  mo- 
ment. 

It  soon  appeared  to  the  Massachusetts  delegation  to  the  Peace 
Congress  that  concessions  to  the  slave  power  were  expected,  sacri- 
ficing all  that  had  been  gained  in  years  of  struggle,  and  this  would 
only  lead  to  more  unreasonable  demands;  so  the  discussions  only 
served  the  valuable  purpose  of  gaining  time  before  the  inevitable 
war,  and  considering  what  could  be  saved  of  the  Government's 
points  of  vantage  and  property.  Mr.  William  H.  Aspinwall,  of 
New  York,  told  Mr.  Forbes  that  General  Scott  was  very  anxious, 
for  he  knew  that  Major  Anderson  was  not  only  short  of  ammuni- 
tion, but  was  mainly  dependent  for  his  food-supply  on  the  Charles- 
ton market.  Aspinwall  and  Forbes  made  plans  to  send  a  vessel 
with  adequate  relief  in  powder  and  food,  advancing  the  money 
at  their  own  risk.  The  vessel  was  to  be  ostensibly  consigned  to 
Charleston  merchants,  and  defended  by  schooners  in  tow  on  each 
side  loaded  with  hemp.  Lieutenant  Gustavus  B.  Fox,  afterwards 
Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  was  willing  to  go  in  charge.  The 
old  General  was  delighted,  but  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  take 
the  Navy  Department  into  counsel,  of  which  Toucey,  of  doubtful 
loyalty,  was  Secretary.  This  made  hopeless  publicity  and  delay, 
so  the  carefully  and  generously  made  plan  fell  through. 

The  flag  was  fired  upon  April  12,  and  the  fort  surrendered  after 
thirty-six  hours'  bombardment.  The  air  cleared,  and  a  degree  of 
public  unanimity  crystallized  which  would  have  seemed  impos- 
sible in  the  months  before.  It  was  expressed  by  a  blossoming  of 
city  and  village  in  flags.  Our  member  Horatio  Woodman,  lifted 
out  of  himself  by  this  cheering  sight,  wrote  these  fine  lines :  — 

THE  FLAG 

Why  flashed  that  flag  on  Monday  morn 

Across  the  startled  sky? 
Why  leapt  the  blood  to  every  cheek, 

The  tears  to  every  eye? 
The  hero  in  our  four  months'  woe, 

The  symbol  of  our  might, 


252  The  Saturday  Club 

Together  sunk  for  one  brief  hour, 
To  rise  forever  bright. 

The  mind  of  Cromwell  claimed  his  own, 

The  blood  of  Naseby  streamed 
Through  hearts  unconscious  of  the  fire 

Till  that  torn  banner  gleamed. 
The  seeds  of  Milton's  lofty  thoughts, 

All  hopeless  of  the  spring. 
Broke  forth  in  joy,  as  through  them  glowed 

The  life  great  poets  sing. 

Old  Greece  was  young,  and  Homer  true. 

And  Dante's  burning  page 
Flamed  in  the  red  along  our  flag, 

And  kindled  holy  rage. 
God's  Gospel  cheered  the  sacred  cause, 

In  stern,  prophetic  strain, 
Which  makes  His  Right  our  covenant, 

His  Psalms  our  deep  refrain. 

Oh,  sad  for  him  whose  light  went  out 

Before  this  glory  came, 
Who  could  not  live  to  feel  his  kin 

To  every  noble  name; 
And  sadder  still  to  miss  the  joy 

That  twenty  millions  know, 
In  Human  Nature's  Holiday, 

From  all  that  makes  life  low. 

Before  midnight  on  Monday,  the  day  of  Sumter's  fall,  the 
Governor  had  sent  his  summons  to  a  part  of  the  militia,  and  on 
Tuesday  had  the  Sixth  and  Eighth  Massachusetts  Regiments, 
armed,  uniformed,  and  provided  with  the  new  overcoats,  in  Bos- 
ton ready  to  start  for  Washington. 

The  transportation  must  be  provided.  Mr.  Samuel  M.  Felton 
(President  of  the  Philadelphia,  Wilmington  &  Baltimore  Railroad, 
and  brother  of  our  member,  the  President  of  Harvard),  whose 
wise  management  had  secured  the  safe  passage  of  Lincoln  to 
Washington  in  spite  of  plots  to  assassinate  him  on  the  way,  had 
shown  Mr.  Forbes  the  danger  of  the  burning  of  the  railroad  bridges 
between  Baltimore  and  Washington.  This  now  happened,  but 
Mr.  Forbes,  used  to  railroads  and  ships,  promptly  engaged  one 


i86i  253 

steamer  in  Boston,  another  at  Fall  River  by  telegraph,  had  them 
provisioned,  and  sent  his  best  clipper-ship  captain  to  the  latter; 
got  them  both  off  with  their  regiments  on  the  17th  of  April, 
saying,  "Massachusetts  must  be  first  on  the  ground."  ^ 

Mr.  Forbes,  with  no  public  office  or  commission,  except  letters 
and  orders  from  the  Governor,  and  well  backed  by  patriotic  mer- 
chants and  bankers,  helped  the  Governor,  the  State,  the  Country, 
with  experience,  energy,  common  sense,  influence,  and  money. 
Some  one  called  him  the  "Secretary  of  the  Navy  for  Massachu- 
setts," but  he  was  far  more.  He  worked  through  others,  well 
chosen,  and  kept  his  name  out  of  the  newspapers. 

Charles  Francis  Adams  was  sent  to  England  in  May,  as  Minis- 
ter from  the  United  States,  there  to  remain  for  seven  years  of 
great  import  and  trial,  serving  his  Country  with  wisdom  and 
great  firmness.  He  was  chosen  a  member  of  the  Club  after  his 
return. 

Judge  Hoar,  at  the  request  of  the  Governor,  went  to  Wash- 
ington to  perform  the  important  service  of  acting  as  friend  and 
adviser  of  the  Massachusetts  soldiers,  and  mediator  between  them 
and  the  Government  in  that  period  of  trial  and  unpreparedness. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  he  did  this  voluntary  service  well. 

Dr.  Howe  also  gladly  consented  to  go  to  investigate  the  health 
of  our  men,  report  on  the  sanitary  conditions  and  urge  on  the 
Government  to  do  promptly  what  was  necessary.  He  wrote: 
"There  is  more  need  of  a  health  officer  than  a  chaplain;  and  the 
United  States  knows  no  such  officer.  .  .  .  Soap!  soap!  soap!  I 
cry,  but  none  heed.  .  .  .  Washerwomen  are  needed  more  than 
nurses." 

These  efficient  and  influential  envoys  did  what  they  could  at 
the  time  when  the  need  of  a  Sanitary  Commission  was  not  yet 
realized. 

Professor  Peirce  was  at  this  time  Consulting  Astronomer  to 

1  Mr.  Forbes  tells,  in  his  Reminiscences,  that  when  the  second  of  these  vessels,  the  State 
of  Maine,  commanded  by  the  admirable  Captain  Eldridge,  arrived  promptly  at  Fortress 
Monroe,  Colonel  Dimmock,  a  fine  old  West  Point  officer,  was  almost  moved  to  tears  of  joy 
on  seeing  the  reenforcements  pour  in  upon  his  ill-defended  post,  the  most  strategic  post 
upon  our  whole  coast  commanding,  as  it  did,  the  entrance  to  Baltimore,  Washington,  and 
Richmond. 


2  54  'The  Saturday  Club 

the  Coast  Survey,  the  work  of  which,  before  and  during  the  war, 
under  Bache,  was  of  the  greatest  importance.  The  coast-line  from 
Chesapeake  Bay  to  the  Rio  Grande  was  enemy's  country,  to  be 
immediately  blockaded,  with  landing  expeditions  soon  to  follow, 
involving  accurate  knowledge  of  tides,  currents,  shoals,  harbours, 
and  forts.  The  Nautical  Almanac  and  Ephemeris  (as  has  been 
mentioned  in  the  sketch  of  Peirce),  a  remarkable  and  important 
work,  was  due  to  his  brother-in-law,  Captain  Davis  (later.  Ad- 
miral) and  himself.  In  spite  of  his  having  been  a  pro-slavery 
Democrat  with  close  friendship  with  many  Southerners,  after  the 
fall  of  Sumter  Professor  Peirce  was  a  strong  Union  man. 

Motley  arrived  in  Boston  in  early  June,  bringing  "very  bril- 
liant accounts  of  our  English  relations,"  which,  however,  later 
events  in  the  year  did  not  confirm.  The  blockade  was  not  yet 
effective  and,  as  yet,  no  cotton  famine  disturbed  the  British  manu- 
facturers. 

For  a  successful  blockade,  and  for  transportation,  it  Immedi- 
ately appeared  that  the  Navy  must  be  supplemented  by  a  large 
force  of  vessels  and  men.  Mr.  Dana  drew  up  carefully  a  "Bill  for 
a  Volunteer  Navy,"  for  which  Mr.  Forbes,  In  constant  relation 
with  the  admirable  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  Fox,  made 
the  rough  draft.  Mr.  Adams  wrote  of  its  importance  to  check 
privateering  by  the  Confederacy. 

As  will  be  seen  in  the  sketch  of  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  not  yet  one  of 
our  members,  that  alert  and  kindly  man  served,  although  fifty 
years  old,  in  the  company  enlisted  hastily  to  guard  the  arsenal  at 
Cambridge. 

Elliot  Cabot,  the  scholar,  youngest  member  of  the  Club,  was 
forty  years  old.  He  did  not  consider  himself  likely  to  be  useful 
in  the  field,  but  joined  the  excellent  Boston  Drill  Club  on  the 
chance  of  later  emergencies. 

Ward,  as  representative  of  the  Baring  firm  of  English  bankers, 
was  important  In  giving  them  Information  of  the  true  situation 
here,  and  the  attitude  and  resolve  of  our  people. 

The  scholars,  writers,  poets  of  the  Club  loyally  did  their  various 
parts  with  pen,  or  such  personal  service  as  they  could  do  for  the 
soldiers,  or  in  stimulating  public  opinion.    In  November,  Motley 


i86i  255 

was  appointed  Minister  to  Austria,  a  position  which  he  held  for 
six  years. 

Longfellow  took  the  war  very  hard.  On  Sunday,  April  28,  he 
writes :  "  I  am  glad  the  pulpit  did  not  thunder  a  war-sermon  to- 
day. A  *  truce  of  God '  once  a  week  is  pleasant.  At  present  the 
North  Is  warlike  enough,  and  does  not  need  arousing."  But,  eleven 
days  later,  we  find  in  the  journal  the  poet  swept  into  the  military 
current:  "9th.  A  delightful  morning.  ...  In  the  afternoon  went 
with  Felton  to  the  Arsenal  to  see  the  students  drill  —  a  dress 
parade.  As  the  Major  did  not  arrive,  Felton  and  I  were  requested 
to  review  them!  Which  we  did,  by  marching  up  and  down,  in 
front  and  rear." 

He  bears,  soon  after,  this  witness  to  Agassiz's  loyalty  to  the 
land  of  his  adoption:  "July  ist.  Agassiz  comes  to  dinner.  He  has 
a  new  offer  from  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  at  Paris,  to  be  the  head  of 
it,  if  he  will  only  pass  three  months  there  yearly;  but  he  declines." 

That  summer  brought  upon  Longfellow  the  deep  wound  and 
sorrow  of  his  life,  the  death  of  his  wife  by  an  accident  with  fire. 
He  bore  this  overwhelming  grief  with  courage  and  silence,  but 
the  healing  came  very  slowly. 

July  brought  to  the  Country  the  astounding  shock  of  the  defeat 
and  rout  of  its  untrained  militia  —  most  of  whom  had  never 
rammed  a  ball-cartridge  down  the  smooth-bore  of  their  Spring- 
field muskets  —  at  Bull  Run.  But  now  the  North  had  already 
awakened  to  the  fact  that  this  was  no  six-weeks'  war,  and  Massa- 
chusetts regiments  and  batteries  were  being  rapidly  raised,  and 
trained  as  well  as  might  be,  before  being  hurried  to  the  front  where 
General  McClellan  was  doing  excellent  organizing  work. 

Lowell  was  stirred  heart  and  soul  by  the  war,  its  cause,  and 
its  hoped-for  issue.  The  views  expressed  through  the  mouth  of 
his  young  Hosea  Biglow  on  war  in  general,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
unrighteous  Mexican  War,  had  then  had  no  saving  qualifications. 
He  had  said,  — 

"As  for  war,  I  call  it  murder; 
There  you  hev  it  plain  an'  flat; 
I  don't  hev  to  go  no  furder 
Than  my  Testament  fur  that." 


2  5^  The  Saturday  Club 

Now,  Hosea,  in  middle  age  began  to  believe  that  there  were 
righteous  wars — ^  this  one  eminently  so;  and  it  became  his  mis- 
sionary work  to  show  England  that  it  was. 

Two  of  Lowell's  brother's  sons  and  one  son  of  his  sister  were 
early  commissioned  in  the  Army,  as  well  as  other  youths  of  his 
kindred  less  near.  The  head  of  Governor  Winthrop  on  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  was  now  replaced  by  the  American  flag,  and  its  patriotic 
articles  and  poems  stirred  the  public.  In  the  end  of  October  an- 
other disastrous  battle  was  fought  at  Ball's  Bluff,  in  which 
Lowell's  nephew  William  Putnam  was  killed,  and  young  Wendell 
Holmes  severely  wounded.^  Early  in  November,  the  seizure  by 
Captain  Wilkes,  U.S.N.,  of  the  commissioners  of  the  Confederacy 
from  dn  English  vessel,  and  their  imprisonment  at  Fort  Warren, 
delighted  the  North  and  greatly  irritated  England.  War  seemed 
imminent,  but  President  Lincoln  decided  that  they  could  not 
rightly  be  held,  and  it  was  averted.  This  incident  gave  occasion 
to  Lowell,  through  the  mouth  of  his  more  mature  Hosea  Biglow,  to 
bring  out  his  admirable  "Jonathan  to  John":  — 

"It  don't  seem  hardly  right,  John, 
When  both  my  hands  was  full. 
To  stump  me  to  a  fight,  John,  — 
Your  cousin,  too,  John  Bull! 
Ole  Uncle  S.,  sez  he, 'I  guess 
We  know  it  now,'  sez  he; 
'The  lion's  paw  is  all  the  law, 
Accordin'  to  J.  B., 
:''  Thet's  fit  for  you  an'  me.' 


"We  own  the  ocean,  too,  John, 
You  mus'n'  take  it  hard 
If  we  can't  think  with  you,  John, 
It's  jest  your  own  back  yard. 
Ole  Uncle  S.,  sez  he,  'I  guess 
Ef  thet's  his  claim,'  sez  he, 
'The  fencin'-stuff  will  cost  enough 
To  bust  up  friend  J.  B. 
Ez  wal  ez  you  and  me!' 


*  See  Dr.  Holmes's  very  human,  yet  professional,  article  in  the  Atlantic  of  December, 
1862,  "My  Hunt  after  the  Captain." 


i86i  257 


'We  give  the  critters  back,  John, 
'Cos  Abram  thought 't  was  right; 
It  warn't  your  bullying  clack,  John, 
Provokin'  us  to  fight. 
Ole  Uncle  S.,  sez  he,  'I  guess 
We've  a  hard  row,'  sez  he, 
'To  hoe  jest  now;  but  thet,  somehow, 
May  happen  to  J.  B. 
Ez  wal  ez  you  an'  me.' " 


United  States  Marshal  John  S.  Keyes,  of  Concord,  by  official 
orders  released  the  prisoners  January  2,  1862.  Dr.  Holmes  re- 
called in  later  years  that  "One  of  the  most  noted  of  our  early 
guests  was  Captain  (later,  Commodore)  Charles  Wilkes  of  the  San 
Jacinto,  who  had  just  taken  Mason  and  Slidell  from  the  Trent,  and 
was  made  a  hero  of  for  his  blunder." 

Among  these  memories  of  the  sad  or  exciting  events  of  the  first 
year  of  war,  two  others  of  quite  another  flavour  should  be  set 
down  in  our  book:  — 

Longfellow,  on  the  23d  of  February  of  this  year,  writes:  "At 
the  Club  old  President  Quincy  was  our  guest;  and  was  very 
pleasant  and  wise."   He  had  just  entered  on  his  ninetieth  year. 

In  Mr.  Scudder's  Life  of  Lowell  he  has,  in  one  of  his  letters,  an 
entertaining  picture,  from  the  good  old  days  of  the  Club,  of  a  single 
combat  between  a  famous  British  heavy-armed  champion  and  a 
diminutive,  but  gallant  and  agile,  New  Englander.  The  date  is 
September  20,  1861,  when  Lowell  writes:  — 

"I  dined  the  other  day  with  Anthony  Trollope,  a  big,  red-faced, 
rather  underbred  Englishman  of  the  bald-with-spectacles  type. 
A  good,  roaring  positive  fellow  who  deafened  me  (sitting  on  his 
right)  till  I  thought  of  Dante's  Cerberus.  He  says  he  goes  to 
work  on  a  novel  'just  like  a  shoemaker  on  a  shoe,  only  taking  care 
to  make  honest  stitches.'  Gets  up  at  five  every  day,  does  all  his 
writing  before  breakfast,  and  always  writes  just  so  many  pages  a 
day.  He  and  Dr.  Holmes  were  very  entertaining.  The  Autocrat 
started  one  or  two  hobbies,  and  charged,  paradox  in  rest  —  but  it 
was  pelting  a  rhinoceros  with  seed-pearl :  — 

"  Dr.  You  don't  know  what  Madeira  is  in  England. 


258  "The  Saturday  Club 

"  T.  I'm  not  so  sure  it's  worth  knowing. 

"Z)f.  Connoisseurship  In  It  with  us  Is  a  fine  art.  There  are  men 
who  will  tell  you  a  dozen  kinds,  as  Dr.  Waagen  would  know  a 
Carlo  Dolci  from  a  Guido. 

"  T.  They  might  be  better  employed! 

"Z)r.  Whatever  is  worth  doing  is  worth  doing  well. 

"  T.  Ay,  but  that's  begging  the  whole  question.  I  don't  admit 
it's  worse  doing  at  all.  If  they  earn  their  bread  by  it,  it  may  be 
worse  doing  (roaring). 

"Dr.  But  you  may  be  assured  — 

"  T.  No,  but  I  may  n't  be  asshored.  I  won^t  be  asshored.  I 
don't  intend  to  be  asshored  (roaring  louder) ! 

"And  so  they  went  it.  It  was  very  funny.  Trollope  would  n't 
give  him  any  chance.  Meanwhile,  Emerson  and  I,  who  sat  be- 
tween them,  crouched  down  out  of  range  and  had  some  very  good 
talk,  the  shot  hurtling  overhead.  I  had  one  little  passage  at 
arms  with  T.  a  propos  of  English  peaches.  T.  ended  by  roaring 
that  England  was  the  only  country  where  such  a  thing  as  a  peach 
or  a  grape  was  known.  I  appealed  to  Hawthorne,  who  sat  oppo- 
site. His  face  mantled  and  trembled  for  a  moment  with  some  droll 
fancy,  as  one  sees  bubbles  rise  and  send  oflF  rings  In  still  water 
when  a  turtle  stirs  at  the  bottom,  and  then  he  said,  'I  asked  an 
Englishman  once  who  was  praising  their  peaches  to  describe  to 
me  what  he  meant  by  a  peach,  and  he  described  something  very 
like  a  cucumber.'   I  rather  liked  Trollope." 

The  founding  of  an  institution  in  this  year,  great,  beneficent,  and 
effective,  in  which  members  of  the  Club  were  Interested,  and  for 
which  they  gave  generously,  and  some  did  personal  service,  must 
not  be  forgotten.  The  National  Sanitary  Commission,  an  Idea 
originating  in  New  York,  was  zealously  taken  up  in  Boston,  and 
an  organization  for  Massachusetts  made,  with  J.  Huntington 
Wolcott  as  head.  It  extended  throughout  the  loyal  States.  Rev. 
Henry  W.  Bellows  was  the  head  of  the  general  Commission,  but 
the  practical  work  was  through  the  head  and  hands  of  Frederick 
Law  Olmsted  (later,  one  of  our  associates)  and  his  excellent  deputy, 
Frederick  N.  Knapp,  of  Plymouth.  The  Secretary  of  War  named 


i86i  259 

for  service  on  this  Board  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  Dr.  Jeffries  Wyman, 
and  Professor  Wolcott  Gibbs,  all  of  them,  in  time,  members  of 
the  Club. 

This  first  year  of  the  Civil  War  proved  a  touchstone  of  the 
metal  of  the  citizens.  Its  threatenings  had  already  influenced  the 
membership  of  the  Club;  its  continuance  did  so  even  more.  It 
was  a  sundering  sword  in  each  community.  The  Cause  was  not 
only  an  urgent  matter  for  discussion,  but  for  immediate  and  varied 
action.  The  elders  at  home  could  no  more  escape  from  their  share 
of  speech  or  work  than  the  boys  in  the  field  from  military  duties. 

In  this  year  four  new  members  were  chosen.  One  was  a  quiet 
scholar,  but  of  clear  sight  and  firm  character;  one  a  patriot  of 
widest  scope,  a  reformer,  not  by  speeches,  but  by  great  and  diffi- 
cult deeds  genially  done;  the  third  a  Unitarian  minister  of  influ- 
ence, a  professor  at  Harvard,  and  a  notable  metaphysician;  the 
fourth  a  physician  by  education,  but  attracted  from  the  profes- 
sion towards  promoting  modern  public  enterprises;  brave  and 
outspoken  also  in  the  cause  of  Freedom. 


JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT 

James  Elliot  Cabot  was  born  in  Boston  in  1821.  His  father, 
Samuel  Cabot,  was,  at  the  time,  the  active  partner  of  the  firm  of 
the  Perkins  Brothers  engaged  in  trade  with  the  Orient.  Mr.  Cabot 
married  Eliza,  eldest  daughter  of  Colonel  Thomas  Handasyd 
Perkins,  perhaps  the  leading  citizen,  as  well  as  merchant,  of  Boston 
in  his  day,  and  its  benefactor  as  the  founder  of  the  Perkins  In- 
stitution for  the  Blind,  and,  with  others,  of  the  Massachusetts 
General  Hospital  and  the  Athenaeum. 

Elliot  entered  college  well  prepared  at  the  age  of  fifteen.  In 
the  autobiographic  sketch  which  he  wrote  at  his  son's  request  in 
his  later  years,  from  which  I  shall  quote  freely,  he  says  that  he 
took  little  interest  in  his  studies,  which  his  instructors  conducted 
in  a  dead-and-alive  way.  He  speaks  of  Edward  Channing's  value 
for  good  English,  but  lack  of  needful  enthusiasm;  "The  rest  were 
pedants,  with  the  exception  of  Jones  Very,  our  Greek  tutor,  a 
man  of  high  and  noble  character  and  full  of  religious  enthusiasm, 
but  somewhat  morbid  and  unbalanced." 

"In  college,"  Cabot  says,  "I  was  something  of  a  transcenden- 
talist,  a  great  admirer  of  Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartus,  and  had  con- 
ceived a  contempt  for  the  working-day  world.  I  was  without  the 
enticement  of  ambition  or  the  sting  of  poverty,  and,  though  I  had 
a  respect  for  learning  and  read  all  sorts  of  abstruse  books,  .  .  . 
rather  despised  the  official  standards,  without  ever  being  idle  or 
dissipated."  His  special  intimates  were  William  Sohier  and 
Henry  Bryant,  eager  as  sportsman  and  ornithologist  respectively. 
All  together  they  scoured  the  Fresh  Pond  and  Brick  Yard  Marshes, 
the  first  two  doing  most  of  the  shooting,  and  Cabot  the  skinning 
of  the  specimens,  which  skins  he  forwarded  to  the  equally  zealous 
brother  Sam,  then  studying  medicine  in  Paris,  to  exchange  for 
French  bird  skins. 

On  graduating  he  joined  Dr.  Sam  in  Switzerland  and  they  saw 
Italy  together  with  interesting  adventures  such  as  befel  travellers 
in  the  Apennines  in  those  days,  and  then  went  to  Paris  to  study. 


yames  Elliot  Cabot  261 

Elliot  followed  courses  on  Natural  History  at  the  Jardln  des 
Plantes  and  on  Literature  at  the  College  de  France.  But  with 
spring  came  an  attractive  proposal.  Three  of  his  classmates 
wrote  urging  him  to  "join  them  at  Heidelberg  for  a  conquest  of 
German  philosophy  in  its  application  to  law,  which  we  were  all  of 
us  expecting  to  make  our  profession." 

"*'My  life  in  Heidelberg  was  a  delightful  episode  of  hard  work 
upon  German,  varied  by  long  walks  over  the  beautiful  hills  and 
dales,  excursions  up  the  Neckar,  and  pleasant  society  at  the  How- 
itts',  who  were  living  there.  With  a  view  mostly  to  the  lan- 
guage we  attended  lectures  on  History  and  Philosophy  of  Law." 
Thence  the  friends  proceeded  to  Berlin.  Cabot  attended  the 
course  of  Steffens,  the  leading  representative  there  of  Schelllng's 
philosophy.  He  describes  it  as  "a  sort  of  transcendental  physical 
geography  and  geology,  an  application  of  Schelllng's  doctrines  to 
natural  science."  Schelling  himself  came  there  during  the  win- 
ter, it  was  said,  for  the  purpose  of  extinguishing  Hegel.  His  course 
was  on  "The  Philosophy  of  Mythology." 

The  winter  of  1842-43  Cabot  spent  at  Gottingen  with  his  Vir- 
ginian crony.  Heath,  studying  Kant,  and  also  taking  a  course  in 
the  Physiological  Laboratory  of  Wagner,  but  always  enjoying 
the  Lleberkranze  of  the  students,  and  even  learning  to  fence  with 
the  "schlager."  He  always  loved  the  walking  excursions,  which  he 
and  his  friends  took  along  the  Rhine  and  among  the  Alps. 

But  in  later  years  Mr.  Cabot  wrote:  "As  I  look  back  upon  my 
residence  in  Europe,  what  strikes  me  is  the  waste  of  time  and 
energy  from  having  had  no  settled  purpose  to  keep  my  head 
steady.  I  seem  to  have  been  always  well  employed  and  happy; 
but  I  had  been  indulging  a  disposition  to  mental  sauntering  and 
the  picking  up  of  scraps,  very  unfavourable  to  my  education.  I 
was,  I  think,  naturally  inclined  to  hover  somewhat  above  the 
solid  earth  of  practical  life  and  thus  to  miss  its  most  useful  les- 
sons." It  is  interesting  to  see  how,  in  reviewing  each  episode  of 
his  life,  Mr.  Cabot's  humility  and  his  high  standards  make  him 
blame  himself  frankly  for  shortcomings,  while  in  his  quiet  way  and 
according  to  his  gifts  he  did  many  things  well,  and,  more,  was  so 
much  to  those  around  him.   His  happiness  was  his  approval. 


2  62  The  Saturday  Club 

On  his  return  from  his  three  years  of  study  in  Europe,  Mr. 
Cabot  joined  his  family  at  Nahant.  His  great-grandfathers  — 
Norman-French  in  blood  —  came  from  the  Channel  Islands,  and 
thereafter  the  family  had  been  Boston  merchants,  trading  far 
over  sea,  as  had  the  Perkinses,  his  mother's  family,  and  so 
Elliot  always  lived  near  the  shore,  Brookline,  in  winter,  being 
the  farthest  inland  of  his  homes  through  life.  So  he  enjoyed,  dur- 
ing the  summer,  the  family  schooner-rigged  boat;  when  autumn 
came,  he  entered  the  Harvard  Law  School.  He  received  his 
Bachelor's  degree  in  1845.  For  a  year  he  was  in  the  office  of 
William  D.  Sohier,  and  then  joined  Mr.  Francis  Edward  Parker 
in  establishing  a  law  firm.  Mr.  Cabot  modestly  writes:  "It  was 
at  his  request,  and  he  insisted  that  my  name  should  be  first  on 
the  sign.  As  he  must  have  been  aware  of  his  great  superiority  to 
me  in  business  capacity,  I  can  only  explain  his  desire  for  the 
position  by  the  belief  that  my  name  would  attract  more  attention, 
and  that  my  connections  would  bring  us  more  business  than  he 
saw  his  way  to  elsewhere."  But  it  is  probable  that  Parker  knew 
what  a  clear  head  Cabot  had,  also  his  power  of  concentration  on 
abstruse  subjects.  Mr.  Cabot  goes  on:  "I  think  that  we  were  in 
business  together  for  about  a  year,  and  that  we  paid  our  expenses, 
which  were  greater  in  the  way  of  furniture,  position,  etc.,  than  I 
should  have  indulged  in,  from  his  idea  (which  I  have  no  doubt 
was  well  founded)  that  it  was  good  economy.  Parker  then  —  1847 
—  had  an  offer  from  R.  H.  Dana  to  take  a  room  next  him  and  to 
be  in  some  way  connected  with  him  in  business.  Partly  to  facili- 
tate this  step,  which  he  hesitated  to  take,  but  also  because  I  felt 
no  real  inclination  to  the  profession,  I  retired  from  it." 

In  a  letter  written  to  Ward,  December,  1844,  Emerson  says: 
"I  have  an  admirable  paper  on  Spinoza  sent  me  months  ago  for 
the  Dial  by  a  correspondent  whom  I  have  just  discovered  to  be 
Elliot  Cabot,  in  the  law  school  at  Cambridge,  son  of  Samuel  Cabot. 
Do  you  know  him.?  He  seems  to  be  a  master  in  the  abstruse  science 
of  psychology."  This  shows  that  the  philosophic  tendency  and 
the  studies  in  Germany  already  bore  fruit.  Cabot's  name  also 
had  already  been  found  among  the  attendants  of  the  Symposia 
mentioned  in  the  first  pages  of  this  book.   After  the  death  of  the 


yames  Klliot  Cabot  263 

Dial^  mainly  at  the  urgency  of  Theodore  Parker  and  some  others 
who  felt  that  the  young  Hterature  and  the  crying  reforms  of  New 
England  required  an  organ  —  Parker  said  "a  Dial  with  a  beard" 
—  the  Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review  was  started,  but  lived  only 
two  years.  During  that  time  Cabot  was  its  corresponding  sec- 
retary. 

Agassiz  had,  in  the  year  after  his  arrival  here,  decided  to  make 
America  his  home,  and  been  appointed  to  the  professorship  of 
geology  and  zoology  in  the  Scientific  School,  Mr.  Lawrence's  new 
gift  to  Harvard.  Cabot  was  one  of  his  first  pupils,  and,  in  the 
summer  of  1848,  followed  the  master,  one  of  his  twelve  pupils, 
in  his  expedition  to  explore  the  Lake  Superior  region.  By  the 
camp-fire  in  the  evenings  after  a  long  day  exploring  the  cliffs  or 
catching  the  fish,  Agassiz  lectured  to  the  company,  Cabot  taking 
careful  notes.  He  also  kept  a  narrative  journal  of  the  expedition 
which  was  published  on  their  return. 

The  Boston  Athenaeum  was  to  have  a  worthy  building  at  the 
head  of  Beacon  Street,  and  Edward  Cabot's  plan  for  it  had  been 
accepted  in  1848.  He  wished,  however,  to  go  abroad  and  study 
some  fine  buildings  to  improve  his  detail,  and  gladly  left  Elliot 
in  charge  of  the  business  concerns  of  the  office  and  in  relation  with 
Mr.  George  Dexter,  the  engineer.  Mr.  Cabot,  in  the  autobiograph- 
ical notes,  says:  "I  thought  I  might  help  Edward  to  systematize 
his  accounts  and  methods.  Anyway,  I  went  there  and  got  in- 
terested in  learning  something  of  the  business,  and  even  man- 
aged to  run  the  office,  and  to  put  up  some  houses.  ...  At  that 
time  there  were  no  architects  or  hardly  any,  and  people  had  not 
got  in  the  way  of  employing  anybody  but  the  carpenter,  under  the 
owner's  direction.  I  soon  became  able  to  help  those  who  knew 
less  than  I,  and,  with  the  collaboration  of  your  uncle  Harry  Lee, 
built  the  offices  now  occupied  by  the  Cunard  Line,  also  the  rear 
part  of  the  Union  Building,  his  Brookllne  house,  and  many 
others."  When,  in  1852,  the  builder  of  the  Boston  Theatre  got 
into  difficulties  with  the  design,  Colonel  Lee,  one  of  the  directors, 
got  the  business  turned  over  to  the  Cabots,  although  he  himself 
had  some  part  in  the  design.   Mr.  Cabot  says,  "I  worked  hard  at 


264  The  Saturday  Club 

the  Boston  Theatre  plans  to  settle  the  curves  of  the  boxes  and 
other  points  concerning  the  auditorium,  and  also  at  the  building 
of  sundry  houses."  Yet  he  says  that  "this  episode  was  interesting, 
and  filled  the  time  agreeably,  but  hardly  worth  while,  if  it  was  not 
to  be  taken  in  hand  more  firmly." 

In  1857,  Mr.  Cabot  was  most  happily  married  and,  with  his 
wife,  Elizabeth  Dwight,  spent  a  year  abroad,  mostly  in  Italy. 
He  built  his  house  in  Brookline  on  their  return,  his  last  archi- 
tectural work,  except  the  summer  cottage  in  Beverly  Farms. 
Thereafter  his  life  was  passed  at  home,  always  a  student,  and 
doing  faithfully  such  duties  as  were  laid  upon  him  by  those  who 
knew  his  quality.  ,  Though  he  joined  the  Drill  Club  which,  in 
1 861,  gave  some  preliminary  training  to  men  afterwards  dis- 
tinguished as  officers  in  the  war,  he,  feeling  no  fitness  in  himself, 
only  did  so  to  be  prepared  in  case  a  levee  en  masse  was  required, 
but  worked  hard  for  the  Sanitary  Commission  in  Boston.  He 
served  on  the  Brookline  School  Committee  for  many  years;  lec- 
tured on  Kant  at  Harvard  the  first  year  that  "University  Lec- 
tures" were  established,  and  was  also  made  "Instructor  in  Logic" 
to  criticize  seniors'  "forensics."  The  Alumni  chose  him  as  Over- 
seer in  1875,  ^'^^  he  served  diligently  for  six  years  as  chairman  of 
the  Committee  to  visit  the  College.  This  visitation  by  outside 
experts  of  the  different  departments,  and  their  reports  to  the 
Government,  might  well  seem,  then  and  now,  likely  to  be  dis- 
tinctly serviceable  in  criticisms  and  suggestions,  but  Cabot  found 
that  "nothing  of  the  kind  was  wanted  by  any  considerable  num- 
ber of  persons,  most  of  the  Overseers  preferring  to  leave  things 
in  the  hands  of  the  Faculties  and  Corporation,  reserving  only  a 
right  to  protest"  —  in  which  view  he  came  to  concur.  Meantime, 
he  did  much  advisory  work  at  the  Athenaeum  Library  and  the 
new  Museum  of  Fine  Arts.  He  was  an  eminently  fit  member  of 
the  Managing  Board  because  of  his  classic  taste  and  true  artistic 
instinct. 

In  a  letter  to  Henry  James,  Sr.,  Mr.  Cabot  made  an  interesting 
remark  on  Clubs;  but  he  was  speaking  of  quite  another  one  than 
the  Saturday  Club:  "How  is  it  that  Clubs  and  meetings  are  so 
apt  to  grow  abortive  in  the  direct  ratio  of  their  numbers  t  —  I 


yames  Elliot  Cabot  265 

mean  of  the  number  of  members.  There  are  many  pleasant  men 
there,  but  they  seem  paralyzed  by  coming  together  at  a  table." 

Henry  James,  Jr.,  speaks  of  having:  "A  considerable  cluster  of 
letters  addressed  by  my  father  to  Mr.  Cabot,  most  accomplished 
of  Bostonlans,  most  'cultivated'  even  among  the  cultivated,  as 
we  used  to  say,  and  of  a  philosophic  acuteness  to  which  my  father 
highly  testified,  with  which  indeed  he  earnestly  contended.  The 
correspondence  In  question  covered,  during  the  years  I  include, 
philosophic  ground  and  none  other." 

Emerson  quotes  with  pleasure  this  sentence  from  Cabot:  "The 
complete  Incarnation  of  spirit,  which  is  the  definition  of  Beauty, 
demands  that  there  shall  be  no  point  from  which  it  is  absent,  and 
none  in  which  it  abides." 

From  the  days  of  the  Symposium  Mr.  Emerson  had  an  admira- 
tion for  Cabot,  though  they  did  not  often  meet.  He  used  to  say, 
"Elliot  Cabot  has  a  Greek  mind."  He  was  disappointed  when  he 
did  not  find  him  at  the  Club,  for  Cabot  did  not  often  come,  —  and 
so  in  his  last  years  when  his  memory  began  to  fail,  he  rather 
counted  on  sitting  by  him. 

But  a  closer  and  very  happy  relation  with  this  friend  was  soon 
to  come.  Mr.  Emerson  In  1871  was  struggling  under  annoying 
pressure  to  revise  and  arrange  some  essays  for  a  promised  volume. 
It  was  now  beyond  his  powers.  He  had  learned  that  a  London 
pubHsher  meant  to  gather  various  occasional  addresses  and  es- 
says by  him,  unprotected  by  copyright,  and  print  them  for  his 
own  advantage  as  a  new  volume  of  the  Works.  Through  the  loyal 
help  of  Mr.  Moncure  D.  Conway  this  project  was  stopped  on  con- 
dition that  Mr.  Emerson  would  revise  this  material  and  contribute 
other  lectures  and  essays.  He  had  begun  the  task,  no  longer  easy 
for  him,  when  his  house  was  nearly  destroyed  by  fire,  and  from 
the  shock,  the  exposure,  and  fatigue  he  became  weak  and  ill. 
His  memory  had  already  begun  to  fail  to  some  degree,  making 
composition  more  difficult.  Through  the  determined  kindness  of  a 
host  of  friends  his  house  was  rebuilt,  and  he,  meantime,  sent  to 
Europe  and  to  the  Nile  with  his  daughter.  He  returned  looking 
well  and  in  good  general  health,  but  the  English  firm  pressed  him 
for  the  new  book  which,  when  he  attempted  to  go  on  with  it, 


2  66  'The  Saturday  Club 

hung  like  a  dead  weight  upon  him.  It  became  evident  that  he 
was  no  longer  equal  to  the  task. 

In  the  year  before,  the  question  of  who  should  deal  with  his 
manuscripts  when  he  was  gone  had  been  in  his  thought,  and  Mr. 
Cabot's  name  was  the  one  which  he  wistfully  mentioned,  but 
felt  that  the  favour  was  so  great  that  he  could  not  venture  to  ask 
it  from  his  friend.  But  now  the  case  became  urgent.  So,  Mr. 
Emerson's  family,  with  his  permission,  presented  the  matter  for 
Mr.  Cabot's  consideration.  With  entire  kindness  he  consented 
to  give  what  help  he  could,  and  thus  lifted  the  last  load  from  Mr. 
Emerson's  shoulders.  The  relief  was  complete  and  rendered  his 
remaining  years  happy.  At  last  he  could  see  and  come  near  to  the 
friend  whom  he  had  valued  at  a  distance  for  years.  Mr.  Cabot's 
frequent  visits,  often  for  several  days  at  a  time,  were  a  great 
pleasure.  Just  how  large  Mr.  Cabot's  share  in  preparing  for  the 
press  Letters  and  Social,  Aims  was  he  tells  with  entire  frankness 
in  the  preface  to  that  volume.  Mr.  Emerson  furnished  the  mat- 
ter, —  almost  all  written  years  before,  —  but  Mr.  Cabot  the 
arrangement  and  much  of  the  selection.  All  was  submitted  to 
Mr.  Emerson's  approval,  but  he  always  spoke  to  his  friend  of  the 
volume  as  "your  book." 

The  last  measure  of  relief  was  Mr.  Cabot's  promise  to  be  his 
literary  executor  when  the  time  should  come.  This  great  task,  a 
labour  of  years,  dealing  with  the  correspondence,  and  setting  in 
order  the  writings,  private  and  public,  of  more  than  half  a  cen- 
tury —  confused,  too,  from  Mr.  Emerson's  habit  of  using  sheets 
in  different  lectures  —  was  done  as  nearly  perfectly  as  was  pos- 
sible. Although  Mr.  Emerson  lived  ten  years  after  the  burning  of 
the  house,  and  sometimes  read  lectures,  his  production  ended 
with  that  event. 

On  the  afternoon  of  his  death  and  conscious  of  its  near  ap- 
proach, Mr.  Emerson  was  told  that  his  loyal  friend  had  just  ar- 
rived. With  a  joyful  smile  he  exclaimed,  "Elliot  Cabot,  Praise!" 
took  his  hand  as  he  came  to  the  bedside,  and  soon  after  became 
unconscious. 

Mr.  Cabot's  final  and  excellent  service  was  the  writing  the 
Life  of  his  friend.     In  his  autobiographical  notes  he  speaks  of 


yames  Klliot  Cabot  267 

the  memoir  thus  modestly,  "  Into  it  I  put  a  good  deal  of  diligent 
work,  though  when  I  came  to  look  at  it  as  a  whole  after  it  was  done, 
I  agreed  with  the  critics,  who  thought  it  would  have  been  benefited 
by  a  freer  tone  and  a  more  assured  utterance." 

Cabot  goes  on  with  an  account  of  his  later  years : "  If  you  were  to 
ask  me  at  this  present  moment  what  then  I  was  doing,  or  aiming 
to  do,  from  that  time  to  this  ...  I  might  say  perhaps  that  I  was 
seeking  satisfactory  solutions  to  the  great  problems  of  life,  and 
that  I,  upon  the  whole,  succeeded  in  satisfying  myself,  but  never 
got  any  conclusion  into  shape  for  any  statement  that  seemed  worth 
while.  Very  likely  I  lacked  the  power  of  concentration,  and,  in 
the  endeavour  to  grasp  the  whole,  let  things  slip  before  I  had  done 
with  them«  Hence  I  was  much  better  as  critic  than  as  construc- 
tive workman.  .  .  .  However  this  may  be,  my  discursive  habit  of 
mind,  though  it  has  been  fatal  to  success,  has  not  much,  if  at  all, 
disturbed  my  enjoyment  of  what  the  day  has  sent.  My  life  has, 
thus  far,  been  a  very  happy  one,  and  very  much  because  of  the 
varieties  of  my  interests  and  sympathies.  In  my  younger  days, 
'culture,'  which  is  the  cultivation  of  this  tendency,  seemed  to 
many  persons  the  end  of  education.  Nowadays  the  stream  runs 
the  other  way,  and  'liberal  culture'  is  called  'dilettantism';  I 
have  come  to  think  the  modern  way,  upon  the  whole,  nearer  the 
truth;  but  it  ought  not  to  prevent  us  from  seeing  that  deliver- 
ance from  narrowness  and  prejudice  is  one  of  the  constituent  ele- 
ments of  education." 

Elliot  Cabot  was  a  man  clean-cut  In  features,  body,  and  mind; 
hence  in  speech.  He  was  a  man  perfectly  upright  morally,  and 
almost  of  the  ascetic  type,  but  this  was  from  natural  hardihood 
and  simple  tastes.  Like  his  race,  he  was  not  afraid,  but  he  was  not 
aggressive.  His  manners  were  perfect.  He  was  alert,  of  quick  and 
delicate  perception,  and  did  immediately  the  right  thing.  He 
seemed  a  little  reserved,  and,  while  one  talked  to  him,  his  face  was 
under  so  complete  control  that  It  began  to  seem  a  little  Rhada- 
manthine  —  when  suddenly  his  smile  or  genial  laugh  would  come 
assuring  of  Interest  and  appreciation.  Though  critical,  he  was 
kindly  so,  being,  withal,  singularly  modest,  overmuch  so  in  his 


2  68  "The  Saturday  Club 

appreciation  of  his  own  work  and  probably  quite  unconscious  of 
his  elevating  influence.  It  was  my  good  fortune  to  see  much  of 
him  in  my  father's  house  and  in  his  own  family  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life. 

Even  had  he  not  done  any  of  the  excellent  and  varied  works  that 
interested,  or  were  given  to  him  to  do,  along  the  pathway  of  his 
life,  it  was  a  cause  of  active  joy  to  see  him  whether  at  my  father's 
house,  in  his  own  study,  or  surrounded  by  his  wife  and  children 
in  his  charming  home.  It  was  good  to  know  that  such  a  man 
existed.   Doing  was  there,  but  being  seemed  enough. 

E.  W.  E. 


.     SAMUEL  GRIDLEY  HOWE 

"It  has  fallen  to  my  lot  to  know,  both  in  youth  and  in  age,  several 
of  the  most  romantic  characters  of  our  century;  and  among  them 
one  of  the  most  romantic  was  certainly  the  hero  of  these  pages. 
That  he  was  indeed  a  hero,  the  events  of  his  life  sufficiently  de- 
clare." These  sentences,  written  by  Mr.  Frank  B.  Sanborn  in  the 
preface  to  the  biography  of  this  great  man,  are  true.  Here  was  a 
Helper  and  an  Illuminator  from  youth  to  age.  He  may  well  be 
likened  to  the  heroes  of  the  myths  of  the  race,  Prometheus  bring- 
ing celestial  fire  to  warm  benumbed  humanity  and  illuminate  their 
darkness,  or  the  militant  saints  who  slew  dragons  and  giants  to 
free  the  imprisoned  or  enslaved.  Fearless  in  fighting  armed  foes, 
or,  far  harder,  against  fortified  oppressions,  ill-usage  due  to  ig- 
norance and  to  apparently  hopeless  physical  defects,  he  showed 
the  truth  of  another  brave  fighter's  ^  word,  "The  world  advances 
by  impossibilities  achieved."  Yet  his  striving  and  his  conquests 
all  were  forced  on  him  by  compassion  for  the  wronged  and  help- 
less, or  those  in  bonds,  or  born,  — 

"Oh,  worst  imprisonment! 
A  dungeon  to  themselves." 

Mrs.  Howe,  in  her  memoirs  of  her  husband,  tells  us  that  he 
was  born  in  Boston,  on  Pleasant  Street,  in  1801,  the  son  of  Joseph 
N.  Howe,  shipowner  and  proprietor  of  a  rope-walk,  and  Patty 
Gridley,  a  beautiful  woman  and  tender  mother.  Here  follow  two 
anecdotes  showing  the  inborn  courage  of  the  boy:  — 

At  the  Latin  School,  Master  Gould  undertook  to  ferule  him 
until  he  shed  tears,  and  kept  on  until  he  almost  reduced  his  little 
hand  to  a  jelly. 

On  an  occasion  of  great  political  excitement,  all  the  boys  in 
school  were  Federalists  but  two,  and  undertook  to  force  those  two 
to  come  over  to  their  side;  one  did,  but  little  Sam  Howe  would  n't, 
and  was  thrown  downstairs,  head  first. 

*  General  Charles  Russell  Lowell. 


270  The  Saturday  Club 

At  Brown  University,  Howe  was  principally  distinguished  for 
enterprising  and  daring  mischief.  Nevertheless,  he  brought  away 
good  drill  in  Latin,  graduated  in  1821,  and  studied  medicine  in 
Boston  under  Drs.  Ingalls,  Jacob  Bigelow,  Parkman,  and  John 
Collins  Warren,  taking  his  degree  in  1824. 

When  Greece  revolted  against  Turkish  tyranny  and  misrule, 
and  young  Howe,  who  had  now  his  medical  degree,  heard  that 
Byron  had  gone  to  her  aid,  he  too  sailed  as  a  volunteer  In  her 
cause,  but  did  not  arrive  until  his  hero  had  died  at  Mlssolonghl.^ 
He  joined  the  patriots,  shared  with  courage  and  good  common 
sense  their  dangers  and  hardships,  acting  as  surgeon,  but  also 
personally  fighting.  He  tried  to  organize  hospitals  and  ambulances, 
but  soon  the  regular  Greek  army  broke  up  before  the  energetic  and 
fierce  Ibrahim  Pacha,  and  thereafter  It  was  only  guerilla  warfare. 
Howe  liked  the  Greeks,  allowed  for  their  shortcomings  due  to  want 
of  drill  and  long  years  of  bondage  to  Turkey.  He  praised  their 
temperance  and  hardihood  and  stood  by  them  in  their  mountain 
warfare  or  short  expeditions  in  small  vessels,  while  the  resistance 
dragged  on  in  spite  of  the  interference  of  the  European  Powers, 
who  in  1827  defeated  the  Tur-kish  fleet.  After  six  years,  he  saw 
that  his  best  service  to  this  brave  people,  whose  resources  were 
exhausted,  was  to  plead  for  them  in  America,  and  his  eloquence 
won  for  them  $60,000,  clothing  and  supplies.  He  also  established 
on  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth  an  exile  colony.  Greece  still  cherishes 
his  memory. 

On  Dr.  Howe's  return  from  Europe  in  183 1,  not  quite  thirty 
years  old,  it  was  a  question  to  what  purpose  he  should  turn  his 
splendid  activity.  But  before  relating  his  difficult  enterprises 
and  beneficent  deeds,  it  is  well  to  picture  this  young  Arthurian 
knight  of  New  England.  He  was  tall,  spare,  and  strong.  His 
daughter,  from  testimony  of  those  who  knew  him  then,  says 
that  he  seems  to  have  foreshadowed  Kipling's  fine  description  of 
a  youth: — 

"He  trod  the  ling  like  a  buck  in  Spring, 
And  he  looked  like  a  lance  in  rest." 

*  My  uncle,  Dr.  Charles  T.  Jackson,  who  was  Howe's  friend,  told  me  that  Byron's 
helmet  hung  on  the  Doctor's  hat-tree,  and  was  so  small  that  few  people  could  put  it  on. 


Samuel  Gridley  Howe  271 

His  soldierly  bearing  was  marked  through  life,  and,  though  his 
naturally  fair  complexion  was  browned  by  long  exposure  to  sun 
and  wind,  fine  colour  shone  through.  His  hair  was  jet  black.  The 
eager,  deep-set  eyes  —  blue  —  are  very  striking  in  his  pictures. 
In  youth  he  was  clean-shaven.  The  redundance  of  hair  and  beard 
in  the  latest  photographs  masks  his  fine  head  and  face. 

But  to  the  works  that  waited  the  coming  man.  While  Howe 
served  in  Greece,  our  Legislature  had  sanctioned  the  plan  of  the 
New  England  Asylum  for  the  Blind.  Next  year.  Dr.  John  Dix 
Fisher,  who  had  just  returned  from  Paris  greatly  moved  by  seeing 
the  schools  for  the  blind  of  Abbe  Hauy,  sought  for  the  right  man 
to  take  charge  of  the  Boston  school.  Mrs.  Richards  writes: 
"Walking  along  Boylston  Street  one  day  In  company  with  two 
other  members  of  the  committee,  they  met  my  father,  and  Dr. 
Fisher's  search  was  over.  'Here  Is  Howe!'  he  said  to  his  compan- 
ions; *the  very  man  we  have  been  looking  for  all  this  time.'  It  was 
themeetlngoffllntandsteel; thesparkwasstruckinstantly.  Doubt, 
hesitation,  depression  vanished  from  my  father's  mind  like  mist  be- 
fore the  rising  sun.  'In  a  few  days,'  he  says,  'I  made  an  arrange- 
ment to  take  charge  of  the  enterprise,  then  in  embryo,  and  started 
at  once  for  Europe,  to  get  the  necessary  information,  engage 
teachers,  etc.'"  Rejoicing  In  what  he  found  in  France,  Howe 
wrote  to  his  Trustees:  "There  can  be  no  more  delightful  specta- 
cle than  is  presented  by  these  establishments,  where  you  may  see 
a  hundred  young  blind  persons,  changed  from  listless,  inactive, 
helpless  beings  into  Intelligent,  active,  and  happy  ones;  they  run 
about,  and  pursue  their  different  kinds  of  work  with  eager  industry 
and  surprising  success;  when  engaged  In  Intellectual  pursuits,  the 
awakened  mind  is  painted  In  their  Intelligent  countenances." 

But  while  Howe  was  preparing  In  Paris  to  do  a  similar  wonder- 
ful work  In  America,  Lafayette,  knowing  that  he  was  to  visit  Berlin, 
asked  him  to  go  farther  and  carry  food  and  clothes  to  the  suffer- 
ing Polish  refugees.  Howe  was  seized  by  Prussian  authorities  and 
kept  in  prison  for  five  weeks,  and  then  only  was  rescued,  after 
severe  treatment,  by  the  chance  discovery  by  an  American  friend 
of  his  arbitrary  seizure.  His  release  was  demanded  by  the 
United  States  Minister  in  Paris. 


272  'The  Saturday  Club 

Howe  returned,  and  with  kindness,  endless  patience,  and  great 
spirit  began  his  work  as  Superintendent  of  the  Perkins  Institu- 
tion for  the  Blind,  for  Colonel  Thomas  Handasyd  Perkins  ^  had 
given  his  fine  house  and  grounds  in  Pearl  Street  to  the  Asylum. 
Dr.  Howe  personally  taught  pupils  and  with  increasing  success. 

Then  came  the  case  of  Laura  Bridgman,  eight  years  old,  with 
every  sense  but  touch,  smell,  and  taste  absolutely  shut  off  from 
early  infancy — all  avenues  by  which  any  but  the  lowest  material 
for  thought  could  enter  seemingly  barred  beyond  hope.  If  any 
one  would  gain,  or  refresh,  knowledge  of  Howe's  miraculous  suc- 
cess with  this  case  let  him  read  Dickens's  moving  account  of  it 
in  his  American  Notes.  Later,  Dr.  Howe  made  a  plea  for  such  a 
case,  when,  visiting  an  English  workhouse,  he  found  an  old  woman 
deaf,  dumb,  and  crippled,  though,  as  having  sight,  nothing  like 
so  bad  as  the  case  in  which  he  had  triumphed.  This  was  his  plea: 
"Can  nothing  be  done  to  disinter  this  human  soul.'* — perhaps 
not  too  late!  The  whole  neighbourhood  would  rush  to  save  this 
woman  if  she  were  buried  alive  in  the  caving  of  a  pit,  and  labour 
with  zeal  until  she  were  dug  out.  Now,  if  there  were  one  who  had 
as  much  patience  as  zeal,  and  who,  having  carefully  observed  how 
a  little  child  learns  language,  would  attempt  to  lead  her  gently 
through  the  same  course,  he  might  possibly  awaken  her  to  a  con- 
sciousness of  her  immortal  nature.  The  chance  is  small,  indeed, 
but  with  a  smaller  chance  they  would  have  dug  desperately  for 
her  in  the  pit,  —  and  is  the  life  of  the  soul  of  less  import  than 
that  of  the  body.?" 

Charles  Sumner  and  Cornelius  Felton  were  then  warm  and  ad- 
miring friends  of  Howe,  though  in  the  days  of  the  struggle  against 
Slavery,  the  latter  grew  cool.  Both  were  greatly  interested  in 
Laura  Bridgman's  case  and  took  Miss  Julia  Ward  to  the  Blind 
Asylum  to  see  her.  Looking  out  of  the  window,  she  for  the  first 
time  saw  young  Howe  —  riding  fast  up  the  hill  on  his  spirited 
black  horse,  with  crimson  embroidered  saddle-cloth. ^  He  entered, 
and  her  future  husband  was  presented  to  her.    Her  daughter, 

*  The  uncle  of  four  of  our  members,  Charles  C.  and  Edward  N.  Perkins,  John  M. 
Forbes,  and  J.  Elliot  Cabot. 

*  Evidently  a  memento  of  Greece. 


Samuel  Gridley  Howe  273 

Mrs.  Richards,  writes:  "His  presence  was  like  the  flash  of  a 
sword.  There  was  a  power  in  his  look,  an  aspect  of  unresting, 
untiring  energy,  which  impressed  all  who  looked  upon  him;  they 
turned  to  look  again.  Said  a  lady  of  his  own  age  to  me,  'Your 
father  was  the  handsomest  man  I  ever  saw.'  His  personal  modesty 
was  as  great  as  his  personal  charm,  of  which,  be  it  said,  he  never 
seemed  in  the  least  aware.  Absence  of  self-consciousness  was  one 
of  his  strong  characteristics." 

Howe  welcomed  and  had  strength  for  all  new  work.  To  him, 
worse  than  the  darkened  eyes,  ears  without  hearing,  and  re- 
sultant speechless  lips,  seemed  the  crippled  or  aborted  brain.  He 
resolved  to  do  all  that  man  could  to  help  the  idiot  human  beings, 
male  and  female,  then  often  treated  like  beasts  and  kept  in  pens 
—  even  in  the  barn  —  by  their  families.  St.  Vincent  de  Paul, 
early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  had,  at  his  Priory,  tried  to  im- 
prove the  lot  of  idiots;  Itard,  philosopher  and  surgeon,  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth,  had  experimented  again  with  slightly  better 
results;  but  Dr.  Edouard  Seguin,  his  pupil,  saying,  "Idiocy  is 
prolonged  infancy;  hence  physiological  education  of  the  senses 
must  precede  psychical  education  of  mind,"  made  wonderful  ad- 
vances in  the  treatment  of  these  unfortunates.  His  methods 
carried  on  by  Dr.  Howe,  and  Dr.  Fernald,  his  able  successor,  have 
wrought  out  results  in  the  instruction,  usefulness,  and  happiness 
of  these  unfortunates  almost  beyond  hope. 

Dr.  Howe  married  Julia  Ward  in  1843.  They  went  for  their 
wedding  journey  to  Europe  and  the  Doctor  enjoyed  meeting  ad- 
vanced physicians  and  philanthropists,  and  improved  the  oppor- 
tunities which  he  found  to  study  all  sorts  of  humane  reforms. 

It  should  have  been  said  that  one  of  Howe's  most  valued  friends 
was  Horace  Mann  and  each  found  in  the  other  a  man  after  his 
own  heart.  Mann  was  equally  interested  in  the  instruction  of 
deaf  mutes,  and  together  they  worked  towards  getting  articulate 
speech  from  the  deaf  and  the  dumb  instead  of  sign  language,  and 
also  for  lip-reading.  Of  Howe  on  the  Boston  School  Committee, 
Horace  Mann  said:  "Such  work  could  only  have  been  done  by 
an  angel,  or  Sam  Howe." 

After  his  return  from  Europe  and  establishing  the  School  for 


2  74  'The  Saturday  Club 

the  Idiotic  and  Feeble-minded,  Howe  took  active  part  in  the  agi- 
tation against  Slavery,  but  also  he  remembered  those  in  bonds  at 
home,  and  worked  for  prison  reform,  and  looked  after  the  insane, 
and  tried  to  give  discharged  convicts  a  chance  in  life.  He  then 
sought  for  the  causes  of  Idiocy,  "with  startling  results." 

The  Cretans  rose  against  the  oppressive  Turk.  Howe,  helped 
by  Holmes,  Phillips,  Edward  Everett  Hale,  and  others,  raised  a 
large  sum  for  them,  and  set  forth  to  their  aid.  He  was  well-nigh 
shipwrecked  In  the  Mediterranean,  and  largely  through  his  ready 
common  sense  in  supplying  a  sail  from  the  deck  awning,  was  the 
little  steamer  with  Its  broken  machinery  saved.  Though  a  price  was 
set  on  Dr.  Howe's  head,  he  landed  in  Crete  to  examine  the  situa- 
tion, but  in  a  necessarily  very  brief  visit.  From  youth  to  age  Howe 
believed  in  and  practised  man's  reserve  right  of  revolution;  as  in 
foreign  countries,  so  also  at  home  when  government  became  un- 
just beyond  bearing.  He  held  that  the  citizen  must  decide  when 
that  point  was  reached,  but  also  must  face  the  risk  of  his  revolt. 
This  he  always  was  ready  to  do.  He  was  active  in  the  resistance 
to  the  surrender  of  fugitive  slaves.^  He  helped  supply  rifles  to  the 
Kansas  settlers  to  resist  the  Border  ruffians  tolerated  by  the  Ad- 
ministration. From  1843  he  believed  that  actual  force  would  have 
to  be  used  to  get  rid  of  slavery,  and  in  1859  had  helped  John  Brown 
in  his  preparations  for  some  such  blow. 

The  Saturday  Club  chose  Howe  a  member  in  the  first  year  of 
the  war  which  was  to  remove  the  reproach  on  Liberty  to  whose 
cause  his  life  was  vowed.  Social  clubs  are  always  rather  shy  of  re- 
formers, as  men  possessed  of  one  idea,  hence  kill-joys.  Howe  was 
one  of  the  great  reformers,  but  as  a  joyful  and  successful  doer,  not 
preacher;  spirited  and  genial,  with  tact  and  a  sense  of  humour. 
His  daughter,  Mrs.  Richards,  writes  of  him:  "He  was  astonish- 
ingly merry ^  for  so  busy  and  so  intense  a  person.  The  meetings  of 
the  Club  were  among  his  great  pleasures.  He  would  make  a  great 
effort,  rather  than  miss  a  meeting.  His  most  intimate  friends  were 
Sumner,  Felton,  Longfellow." 

^  Robert  Carter,  Esq.,  told  Dana  that  Dr.  Howe  offered  to  lead  a  mob  of  two  hundred 
to  storm  the  United  States  Court-House  and  rescue  Anthony  Burns.    Elsewhere  it  would 
appear  that  Rev.  T.  W.  Higginson's  valiant  winning  of  the  door,  for  a  moment  with  but  . 
two  or  three  follov/ers,  was  futile  because  of  a  mistake  in  the  signal  and  failure  of  organ- 
ization, and  that  Howe  and  others,  brave  and  determined,  were  too  late. 


Samuel  Gridley  Howe  275 

Howe  was  well  beyond  the  military  age,  but  as  soon  as  the  Sani- 
tary Commission  was  formed  he  was  intelligently  helpful,  happy 
to  help  the  cause  of  Freedom. 

Mrs.  Howe  wrote  of  her  husband  that  "he  had  a  prophetic 
quality  of  mind.  .  .  .  What  the  general  public  would  most  prize  and 
hold  fast  is  the  conviction  so  clearly  expressed  by  him,  that  hu- 
manity has  a  claim  to  be  honoured  and  aided,  even  where  its 
traits  appear  most  abnormal  and  degraded.  He  demanded  for 
the  blind  an  education  which  should  make  them  self-supporting; 
for  the  idiot  the  training  of  his  poor  and  maimed  capabilities;  for 
the  insane  and  the  criminal  the  watchful  and  redemptive  tutelage 
of  society.  In  the  world,  as  he  would  have  had  it,  there  should 
have  been  neither  paupers  nor  outcasts.  He  did  all  that  one  man 
could  do  to  advance  the  coming  of  this  millennial  consummation." 

Seemingly  hopeless  works  of  mercy  for  whole  classes  of  helpless 
people  which  Dr.  Howe  dauntlessly  took  in  hand  were  great  suc- 
cesses, seemed  almost  like  old-time  miracles. 

At  the  end  of  his  life  he  might  have  cried,  like  the  rejoicing 
Sigurd  in  Morris's  epic,  — 

"It  Is  done!  and  who  shall  undo  it  of  all  that  are  left  alive? 
Shall  the  gods,  and  the  high  gods'  masters  with  the  tale  of  the  righteous 
strive?" 

Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch  said:  "With  the  exception  of  Garibaldi, 
I  have  always  considered  Samuel  Gridley  Howe  as  the  manliest 
man  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  meet  in  the  world.  .  .  .  When  such 
men  die,  even  comparative  strangers  have  a  sense  of  personal  loss." 

After  Howe's  death,  one  of  the  South  Boston  pupils  said,  "He 
will  take  care  of  the  blind  in  Heaven.  Won't  he  take  care  of  us 
too.?" 

This  sketch  cannot  be  more  fitly  ended  than  with  these  verses 
from  Charles  T.  Brooks's  poem  in  Howe's  honour:  — 

"He  gave  —  with  what  a  keen  delight, — 
Eyes  to  the  fingers  of  the  blind, 
To  feel  their  way  with  inner  light 
Along  the  sunny  hills  of  mind. 


"  And  as  a  pilgrim  of  the  night. 
Groping  his  darksome  way  forlorn. 


276  The  Saturday  Club 

Shows  on  his  kindling  cheeks  the  light 
Reflected  from  the  breaking  morn,  — 

"  So,  as  along  the  raised  highway 
Their  eager  fingers  hurried  on, 
How  o'er  each  sightless  face  the  ray 
Of  joy  —  an  inner  sunrise  —  shone! 

"Nay,  was  there  one  who  seemed  by  fate 
Cut  off  from  converse  with  her  kind, 
Death's  liberating  hand  to  wait 
In  threefold  walls  —  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind,  — 

*'  E'en  there  his  patient  love  could  find, 
By  the  fine  thread  of  touch,  a  way 
To  guide  the  groping,  struggling  mind 
From  its  dark  labyrinth  into  day." 


E.  W.  E. 


FREDERICK  HENRY  HEDGE 

When  Frederick  Henry  Hedge  died,  in  August,  1890,  at  the  age 
of  eighty-five,  his  name  stood  first  in  order  of  seniority  upon  the 
list  of  officers  of  Harvard  University,  although  he  had  retired 
from  active  service.  He  was  also  the  oldest  man  of  the  Saturday 
Club  circle,  but  as  he  was  not  elected  until  1861,  there  were  a  few 
surviving  associates  —  Dwight,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  Whittier  — 
whose  actual  membership  in  the  Club  was  slightly  longer  than  his. 
In  his  later  years  Dr.  Hedge's  attendance  upon  Club  dinners  was 
infrequent.  The  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.,  which  he  had  received 
at  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  Harvard  University 
in  1886,  four  years  before  his  death,  was  the  seal  set  by  the  com- 
munity upon  a  singularly  faithful  service  to  scholarship  and  re- 
ligion, but  his  real  work  had  long  been  done. 

His  distinctive  quality  and  gift,  as  one  looks  back  upon  his 
career,  was  due  in  large  measure  to  that  good  fortune  of  his  youth 
which  sent  him  to  Germany.  For  Frederick  Hedge  was  one  of  the 
earliest  of  those  American  Argonauts  who  sought  in  the  phi- 
losophy and  literature  of  Germany,  in  the  great  Romantic  epoch, 
such  treasures  as  might  enrich  their  own  country.  A  fascinating 
book  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  adventure  may  yet  be  written 
from  the  material  furnished  by  the  letters  and  journals  of  such 
pioneer  students  in  Germany  as  Ticknor,  Everett,  Bancroft, 
Longfellow,  and  many  another  young  man  of  that  generation. 
Henry  James's  Life  of  W.  W.  Story  is  a  masterly  study  of  the  later 
romantic  impulse  which  drove  young  Americans  to  Italy.  But 
the  emigration  to  Germany  was  a  more  purely  intellectual  move- 
ment, and  it  affected  the  careers  of  a  greater  variety  of  men.  Few 
of  these  men  profited  more  than  Hedge  by  his  German  experiences, 
and  few  made  the  riches  of  German  thought  more  steadily  useful 
to  his  American  contemporaries. 

He  was  a  mere  lad  of  thirteen  when  his  chance  came.  His  father, 
Levi  Hedge,  tutor  and  professor  of  Logic  at  Harvard,  sent  him 
abroad  in  18 18  under   the   care  of  young  George  Bancroft,  of 


278  The  Saturday  Club 

Worcester,  who  had  been  graduated  from  Harvard  the  year  before. 
For  the  next  five  years  Frederick  Hedge  pursued  his  German  studies, 
at  first  in  the  Gymnasium  of  Ilfeld  in  Hanover,  and  then  at  Schulp- 
forte  in  Saxony.  When  he  returned  to  Cambridge  in  1823,  he  was 
able  to  enter  the  Junior  class  at  Harvard,  where  he  was  graduated 
in  1825.  He  proceeded  to  the  Divinity  School,  and  was  ordained 
a  minister  in  West  Cambridge,  now  Arlington,  in  1825.  For  the 
next  half-dozen  years  one  constantly  meets  his  name  in  the  list 
of  those  aspiring  young  liberals  of  Cambridge  and  Boston  who 
were  soon  to  rejoice  in  Emerson's  "Divinity  School  Address." 
Hedge  was  a  leader  in  this  group,  much  as  young  John  Sterling 
was  a  leader  among  the  English  disciples  of  Coleridge.  Transcen- 
dentalism was  in  the  Boston  air,  and  had  not  Frederick  Hedge, 
in  his  lucky  boyhood,  drunk  of  the  very  sources  of  this  sacred 
stream  .'*  He  attended  the  very  first  meeting  of  the  Transcendental 
Club  at  the  home  of  George  Ripley  in  Boston,  in  September, 
1836.  There  was  endless  debate,  a  continual  flutter  of  excite- 
ment, solemn  symposia  that  occasionally  bored  even  such  a  pa- 
tient listener  as  Emerson,  —  for  this  arch-radical  wrote  of  a  sym- 
posium at  Dr.  Levi  Hedge's  in  1838:  "It  was  good.  I  nevertheless 
read  to-day  with  wicked  pleasure  the  saying  ascribed  to  Kant, 
that  'detestable  was  the  society  of  mere  literary  men.'  It  must 
be  tasted  sparingly  to  keep  its  gusto.  If  you  do  not  quit  the  high 
chair,  lie  quite  down  and  roll  on  the  ground  a  good  deal,  you  be- 
come nervous  and  heavy-hearted.  The  poverty  of  topics,  the  very 
names  of  Carlyle,  Channing,  Cambridge,  and  the  Reviews  became 
presently  insupportable.   The  dog  that  was  fed  on  sugar  died." 

It  was  no  doubt  fortunate  for  Frederick  Hedge  that  a  call  to  the 
Unitarian  pastorate  in  Bangor,  Maine,  in  1835,  made  him  "quit 
the  high  chair"  of  fervid,  futile  Cambridge  and  Boston  talk,  and 
settle  down  to  his  professional  duties,  which  were  always  solidly 
performed.  Bangor  was  then  a  remote  lumber  town,  on  the  edge 
of  the  Northern  wilderness,  but  in  Hedge's  parish  there  were  per- 
sons of  cultivation  and  force.  He  had  large  leisure,  after  all,  for 
his  favourite  German  books,  and  there  are  local  traditions  of  a 
pipe  and  occasional  lapses  into  verse.  Emerson  preached  for  him 
now  and  then,  and  is  thought  to  have  written  some  of  his  poems 


Frederick  Henry  Hedge  279 

in  the  Bangor  parsonage.  J.  S.  Dwight  occupied  Hedge's  pulpit 
for  three  Sundays  in  1839,  and  found  "much  more  refined  society" 
than  he  anticipated.  "They  are  an  active,  public-spirited  people," 
he  wrote  to  his  sister,  "and  are  not  afraid."  It  is  pleasant  to  note 
that  in  the  Reverend  Mr.  Hedge's  eloquent  Fourth  of  July  ora- 
tion for  1838  he  quotes  effectively  from  his  friend  George  Bancroft's 
History  oj  the  United  States,  the  first  volume  of  which  had  appeared 
in  1834.  In  1 841  the  Bangor  clergyman  was  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
orator  at  Cambridge,  delivering  a  polished  and  persuasive,  though 
scarcely  an  epoch-making,  address  on  "  Conservatism  and  Reform," 
in  which  the  skilful  quotations  from  Goethe  are  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  feature.  Hedge  was  also,  in  the  early  forties,  a 
contributor  to  the  Dial.  But  the  chief  literary  result  of  his  fifteen 
years  in  Bangor  was  the  publication  in  1848  of  the  Prose  Writers 
of  Germany,  containing  excellent  translations  from  twenty-eight 
authors,  and  rendering  to  the  American  public  a  service  compar- 
able to  that  performed  by  Carlyle's  translations  from  the  German 
for  the  English  public,  a  quarter  of  a  century  before.  This  book 
established  Hedge's  reputation  as  a  scholar,  and  led,  many  a 
year  later,  to  his  appointment  as  Professor  of  German  at  Har- 
vard. 

In  1850  he  left  the  quiet  Bangor  parish  for  a  pulpit  in  Provi- 
dence. "Hedge  lives  just  across  the  street  from  me,"  writes 
George  William  Curtis  in  1851,  "and  we  have  many  a  cigar  and 
chat.  He  preaches  superb  sermons."  Harvard  gave  him  the 
degree  of  D.D.  in  1852.  In  the  following  year  he  published,  with 
the  collaboration  of  the  Reverend  F.  D.  Huntington,  a  collection 
of  hymns,  some  of  which  were  composed  by  Hedge  himself  and  are 
to-day  in  wide  use  by  American  churches.  In  1856,  Dr.  Hedge 
succeeded  his  father-in-law,  the  venerable  Dr.  John  Pierce,  — 
chronicler  of  so  many  Harvard  Commencement  seasons,  —  as 
pastor  of  the  First  Parish  of  Brookline.  A  year  later  he  was  ap- 
pointed Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  the  Harvard  Divinity 
School,  though  he  continued  to  reside  in  Brookline  until  1872, 
One  day  in  that  year  he  walked  into  the  office  of  the  young  Presi- 
dent of  Harvard  College  and  surprised  him  by  saying:  "I  under- 
stand that  the  professorship  of  German  is  vacant.    I  should  like 


2  8o  "The  Saturday  Club 

to  be  appointed  to  that  position."  He  added  that  he  had  grown 
weary  of  his  clerical  work  in  Brookline.  President  Eliot  gravely 
promised  to  refer  the  question  to  the  members  of  the  Corporation, 
who,  to  the  surprise  of  at  least  one  person  concerned,  promptly 
voted  for  the  appointment.  Dr.  Hedge  accordingly  removed  to 
Cambridge  and  began  his  new  duties.  But  he  was  now  sixty-seven, 
and  he  held  this  professorship  for  four  years  only.  His  scholar- 
ship was  unquestioned,  but  he  seems  not  to  have  been  a  born 
teacher.  In  fact,  one  present  member  of  the  Club  asseverates  that 
Dr.  Hedge  was  the  worst  teacher  of  German  that  ever  lived.  There 
are  many  claimants,  however,  for  this  distinction,  and  If  Dr. 
Hedge  is  remembered  as  a  somewhat  testy  and  fussy  old  gentle- 
man in  the  classroom,  it  should  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  as  a 
writer  and  speaker  he  was  steadily  reaching  a  wide  and  influential 
audience.  Many  of  his  addresses  on  public  occasions  were  admirably 
phrased,  particularly  his  memorial  discourse  on  Edward  Everett 
in  1865.  As  editor  of  the  Christian  Examiner  and  contributor  to 
the  Christian  Register  and  Unitarian  Review  he  rendered  notable 
service  to  his  own  denomination.  His  book  on  Reason  in  Reli- 
gion (1865)  was  a  temperate  plea  for  liberalism.  A  better-known 
volume,  however,  and  representative  of  the  author's  ripest  and 
wisest  thoughts,  is  Ways  of  the  Spirit,  which  was  published  in 
1877,  a  year  after  Dr.  Hedge  4iad  laid  down  his  college  burdens. 
It  exhibits  wide  reading  in  history  and  philosophy,  a  sympathetic 
understanding  of  many  types  of  Christian  belief,  and  glows  with 
that  faith  In  the  endless  progress  of  the  soul  which  characterized 
the  spiritual  leadership  of  New  England  during  Hedge's  early  man- 
hood. Rarely  has  an  old  man's  book  revealed  a  happier  combina- 
tion of  youthful  ardour  and  tested  wisdom.  It  is  reported  that  the 
good  Doctor's  sufferings  with  eczema  during  the  last  two  years  of 
his  life  caused  him  to  reexamine  his  philosophical  tenets  as  to  the 
ordering  of  the  universe,  and  forced  him  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
Devil  had  a  much  larger  share  in  the  government  of  this  world  than 
he  had  previously  supposed.  But  he  did  not  commit  these  new 
views  to  writing. 

No  discoverable  word  survives  of  all  that  Dr.  Hedge  may  have 
said  at  the  Saturday  Club  table  during  his  membership  of  twenty- 


Frederick  Henry  Hedge  281 

nine  years.  Perhaps  his  voice,  so  sonorous  in  the  pulpit,  lost  some- 
thing of  its  authority  in  the  presence  of  men  more  witty  and  bril- 
liant than  himself,  more  prompt  in  the  give-and-take  of  informal 
intercourse.  Perhaps  he  ate  and  gave  thanks  in  silence,  dreaming 
of  that  great  adventure  of  his  boyhood,  when  he  sailed  with  the 
Argonauts  to  find  out  the  secret  of  Germany. 

B.  P. 


ESTES  HOWE 

Lovers  of  Samuel  Johnson  and  of  his  circle  of  friends  are  never 
weary  of  speculating  as  to  the  personality  of  the  lesser  known 
members  of  the  most  famous  of  Johnson's  clubs.  What  did  Dr. 
Nugent,  Burke's  agreeable  father-in-law,  really  contribute  to 
the  club's  wit  and  wisdom?  Was  Sir  John  Hawkins  actually  "a 
most  unclubable  man"?  Was  Bennet  Langton  really  too  fond  of 
"talking  from  books"  at  club  dinners?  Some  such  curiosity  as 
this  is  provoked  by  the  minor  or  half-forgotten  names  upon  the 
roll  of  the  Saturday  Club.  Dr.  Estes  Howe,  for  example,  was  a 
personable  gentleman  of  intellectual  tastes  and  a  useful  citizen 
of  Cambridge,  but  thirty  years  after  his  death  he  is  recalled 
chiefly  as  an  associate  of  other  men,  —  as  "Lowell's  brother- 
in-law,"  or  as  "one  of  the  Whist  Club,"  or  as  a  member  of  the 
Philosophers'  Camp  in  the  Adirondacks.  He  was  always  a  bit 
overshadowed  by  his  associates.  Yet  it  is  pleasant  to  think  of 
him,  much  as  one  thinks  of  Dr.  Nugent  and  Bennet  Langton,  as 
representing  those  every-day  virtues  and  courtesies  of  social  in- 
tercourse which  are  the  real  cement  of  a  successful  dining-club. 
And  Estes  Howe,  though  he  missed  an  eminent  place  among  his 
contemporaries,  showed  qualities  that  were  lastingly  attractive 
to  men  like  Lowell  and  Emerson.  In  the  "Preliminary  Note  to 
the  Second  Edition"  of  "A  Fable  for  Critics,"  Lowell  consoles 
himself,  in  the  presence  of  hostile  criticisms  of  his  poems,  by  the 
reminder  that  he  can  take  refuge  in  the  society  of  his  three  stanch 
friends  of  the  Whist  Club,  Dr.  Estes  Howe,  "Don  Roberto" 
Carter,  and  John  Holmes:  "I  can  walk  with  the  Doctor,  get  facts 
from  the  Don,  or  draw  out  the  Lambish  quintessence  of  John, 
and  feel  nothing  more  than  a  half-comic  sorrow,  to  think  that,  they 
all  (the  criticisms)  will  be  lying  to-morrow  tossed  carelessly  up 
on  the  waste-paper  shelves,  and  forgotten  by  all  but  their  half- 
dozen  selves."  In  W.  J.  Stillman's  account  of  "the  Philosophers' 
Camp,"  now  reprinted  in  The  Old  Rome  and  the  New  and  again 
in  Stillman's  Autobiography,  there  are  pleasant  glimpses  of  Estes 


W 


Estes  Howe  ^        283 

Howe  in  the  woods.  Emerson,  a  fellow-camper,  writes  thus  of  him 
in  his  "Adirondack  Note-Book":  — 

"  Not  in  vain  did  Fate  dispense 
Generous  heart  and  solid  sense, 
Force  to  make  a  leader  sage, 
In  honour  and  self-honouring. 
Where  thou  art,  society 
Still  will  live  and  best  will  be. 
Who  dost  easily  and  well 
What  costs  the  rest  expense  of  brain, 
Ancestral  merits  richly  dwell. 
And  the  lost  remain. 
And  in  thy  life,  the  honoured  sire 
Will  fill  his  stinted  chalice  higher 
And  Fate  repair  the  world's  mishap 
And  fill  the  gap 
By  the  completed  virtues  of  the  heir." 

The  closing  lines  of  this  rough  sketch,  recalling  the  "stinted 
chalice"  of  "the  honoured  sire,"  refer  to  the  untimely  death 
of  Howe's  father,  Samuel  Howe,  a  distinguished  lawyer  of  west- 
ern Massachusetts.  Graduated  from  Williams  College,  Samuel 
Howe  first  practised  law  in  Worthington,  where  he  had  William 
Cullen  Bryant  as  a  pupil  in  his  office.  He  removed  to  North- 
ampton in  1820,  and  in  1821  was  appointed  Judge  of  the  Court  of 
Common  Pleas.  He  died  in  Boston  in  1828  at  the  age  of  forty- 
three,  leaving  the  reputation  of  having  been  one  of  the  best-read 
lawyers  of  his  day  and  a  judge  of  great  promise. 

His  son  Estes  was  born  in  Worthington  on  July  13,  18 14.  Upon 
the  removal  of  the  family  to  Northampton  in  the  boy's  sixth 
year,  he  attended  school  there,  and  after  Joseph  G.  Cogswell  and 
George  Bancroft  opened  their  Round  Hill  School  in  Northamp- 
ton in  1823,  young  Howe  became  their  pupil.  Many  future  mem- 
bers of  the  Saturday  Club,  among  them  John  Murray  Forbes,  — 
who  was  Howe's  second  cousin,  —  John  Lothrop  Motley,  and 
Samuel  G.  Ward,  were  also  students  at  Round  Hill.  But  Estes 
Howe  was  not  happy  there,  and  had  a  cordial  dislike  for  George 
Bancroft.  He  was  therefore  sent  to  Phillips  Academy,  Andover, 
and  entered  Harvard  College  at  fourteen  in  1828,  six  months  after 
his  father's  death.  His  mother,  finding  it  necessary  to  support  her 


284  The  Saturday  Club 

four  children,  removed  to  Cambridge  and  opened  a  boarding-house 
for  students,  at  first  in  Dunster  Street,  then  in  Appian  Way,  and 
finally  in  a  house  she  built  on  Garden  Street,  next  but  one  to 
Christ  Church.  She  was  a  woman  of  peculiar  refinement  and  of 
marked  conversational  powers.  Charles  Sumner,  a  future  Satur- 
day Club  friend  of  her  son,  boarded  with  her  throughout  his  col- 
lege course,  and  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  the  English  poet,  was  also 
a  guest  at  her  table  during  his  residence  in  Cambridge.  The  luck 
of  the  alphabet,  which  was  responsible  for  so  many  enduring  col- 
lege friendships  in  the  old  days  of  required  chapel  and  required 
studies,  brought  Estes  Howe,  for  his  four  years  with  the  class  of 
1832,  to  the  seat  next  John  Holmes,  and  they  became  lifelong 
cronies.   John  Sullivan  Dwight  was  another  classmate. 

Howe  was  graduated  from  the  Harvard  Medical  School  in 
1835,  and  moved  to  the  then  frontier  State  of  Ohio,  where  he  prac- 
tised medicine  for  a  while  at  Cincinnati  and  afterward  at  Pome- 
roy,  a  small  town  on  the  Ohio  River.  Here  he  varied  his  profes- 
sional duties  by  running  a  flour-mill  and  getting  a  dangerous  taste 
for  business  which  was  ultimately  to  spoil  his  career  as  a  doctor, 
and  involve  him,  late  in  life,  in  financial  disaster.  He  married  a 
Cambridge  lady,  Harriet  Spelman,  in  1838,  and  after  her  death  in 
1843,  he  gave  up  the  Pomeroy  ventures  and  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  soon  abandoned  his  profession,  and  interested 
himself  in  Abolition  politics.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Free-Soil  Convention  in  1848,  a  supporter  of  Dr.  Palfrey 
for  Representative  in  Congress,  and  was  one  of  the  six  signers  of 
the  Appeal  to  Freemen  of  the  Fourth  District  to  stand  up  boldly 
against  the  encroachments  of  Slavery.  Judge  Howe  headed  this 
list,  and  Sumner  and  Dana  had  worked  in  the  Convention. 

In  these  years  Howe  saw  much  of  James  Russell  Lowell,  who 
had  married  Maria  White,  of  Watertown,  one  of  four  ardent  and 
attractive  sisters,  whose  home  was  a  centre  of  Abolition  energy. 
In  December,  1848,  Dr.  Howe  married  the  eldest  of  these  sisters, 
Lois  White,  and  thus  became  Lowell's  brother-in-law.  They 
made  their  first  home  in  Mason  Street,  Cambridge,  but  removed 
in  1852  to  the  large  house  on  the  corner  of  Oxford  and  Kirkland 
Streets.    This  house,  happily  filled  with  children  and  with  con- 


Kstes  Howe  285 


stant  guests,  is  pictured  in  Mr.  Scudder's  Lije  of  Lowell.  For 
it  was  here  that  Lowell  left  his  motherless  daughter,  with  her 
governess.  Miss  Frances  Dunlap,  when  he  went  abroad  in  1855. 
Here  he  returned  in  1856,  married  Miss  Dunlap  in  1857,  and  here 
they  continued  to  live  until  they  removed,  three  or  four  years 
later,  to  Elmwood. 

Estes  Howe  was  still  known  as  "Doctor,"  but  he  was  now  en- 
grossed in  the  miscellaneous  interests  which  filled  the  remainder 
of  his  life.  He  was  the  pioneer  of  Cambridge  street  railways, 
water-works,  and  gas-works,  and  served  as  treasurer  of  all  these 
companies.  He  was  interested  in  Nova  Scotia  and  mines,  in  a 
gold  mine,  in  various  Vermont  and  Massachusetts  railroads,  was 
Inspector  of  State  Prisons,  and  served  in  the  State  Senate.  Like 
most  of  the  old  Free-Soilers,  he  was  a  stanch  Republican,  although 
he  turned  Mugwump  in  1884,  and  had  long  been  a  Free-Trader. 

Dr.  Howe  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club  in  1861, 
and  was  constant  in  his  attendance  until  his  death  in  1887. 
Lowell  was  by  no  means  the  only  Saturday  Club  man  with  whom 
he  stood  on  terms  of  intimacy.  Sumner,  Andrew,  and  Judge  Hoar 
were  among  his  warm  friends,  and  the  letters  of  Lowell  and  of 
John  Holmes  give  many  pleasant  pictures  of  meetings  of  the 
famous  Whist  Club.  —  After  Lowell  and  Carter  had  left  Cam- 
bridge, John  Bartlett  and  Charles  F.  Choate  took  their  places. 
Dr.  Howe  was  a  passionate  lover  of  the  theatre,  was  a  charter 
member  of  the  Union  Club  of  Boston,  and  enjoyed  particularly 
his  outings  with  the  Adirondack  Club.  Although  in  no  sense 
a  man  of  letters,  his  literary  and  learned  companions  found  him 
an  agreeable  associate,  with  a  charming  talent  for  wide-ranging 
talk  and  a  fund  of  delightful  stories. 

He  met  with  fortitude  the  financial  reverses  which  pressed  heav- 
ily upon  him  after  his  sixtieth  year.  The  temptation  to  vision- 
ary speculations  was  too  strong  to  be  resisted,  and  his  eggs  were 
always  in  too  many  diff'erent  baskets.  The  end  of  all  these  mul- 
tifarious and  ever-hopeful  activities  came  in  his  seventy-third 
year,  after  a  long  and  obscure  illness,  which  proved  to  be  cancer. 
Both  of  his  sons  had  died  before  him.  Yet  he  seems  to  have  main- 
tained until  the  very  close  his  serenity  of  temper,  the  wholesome 


2  86  The  Saturday  Club 

sweetness  and  confidence  which  had  endeared  him  to  his  friends. 
"A  genuine  man,"  Charles  Eliot  Norton  once  called  him,  and  Mr. 
Norton's  phrases  were  fastidious.  One  can  easily  guess  how  this 
man  of  "generous  heart  and  solid  sense"  endeared  himself  to  his 
associates  of  the  Club,  and  can  understand  why  Lowell,  in  the 
sensitiveness  and  passion  of  his  early  years  of  authorship,  could 
find  comfort  in  "talk  with  the  Doctor." 

B.  P. 


Chapter  IX 
1862 

In  the  dark  time  in  the  autumn  of  1 861  after  the  rout  of  Bull  Run  and  before  any 
cheering  successes  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  Lowell,  striving  against  despair,  wrote 
"The  Washers  of  the  Shroud."  The  Three  Fates  are  preparing  it  for  what  nation? 
He  pleads  with  them  to  spare  ours.   They  answer  :  — 

"When  grass-blades  stiffen  with  red  battle-dew. 
Ye  deem  we  choose  the  victor  and  the  slain: 
Say,  choose  we  them  that  shall  be  leal  and  true. 
To  the  heart's  longing,  the  high  faith  of  brain? 
Yet  there  the  victory  lies,  if  ye  but  knew. 

**Three  roots  bear  up  Dominion:  Knowledge,  Will, — 
These  twain  are  strong,  but  stronger  yet  the  third,  — 
Obedience.  — 'Tis  the  great  tap-root  that  still. 
Knit  round  the  rock  of  Duty,  is  not  stirred. 
Though  Heaven-loosed  tempests  spend  their  utmost  skill. 

"Is  the  doom  sealed  for  Hesper?  1  'Tis  not  we 
Denounce  it,  but  the  Law  before  all  time: 
The  brave  makes  danger  opportunity; 
The  waverer,  paltering  with  the  chance  sublime. 
Dwarfs  it  to  peril;  which  shall  Hesper  be? 

*'Hath  he  let  vultures  climb  his  eagle's  seat 
To  make  Jove's  bolts  purveyors  of  their  maw? 
Hath  he  the  Many's  plaudits  found  more  sweet 
Than  Wisdom?  held  Opinion's  wind  for  Law? 
Then  let  him  hearken  for  the  doomster's  feet! 

**  Rough  are  the  steps,  slow-hewn  in  flintiest  rock. 
States  climb  to  power  by;  slippery  those  with  gold 
Down  which  they  stumble  to  eternal  mock: 
No  chafferer's  hand  shall  long  the  sceptre  hold. 
Who,  given  a  Fate  to  shape,  would  sell  the  block. 

««We  sing  old  Sagas,  songs  of  weal  and  woe. 
Mystic  because  too  cheaply  understood; 
Dark  sayings  are  not  ours;  men  hear  and  know, 

^  That  is,  America,  the  Western  star. 


2  88  "The  Saturday  Club 

See  Evil  weak,  see  strength  alone  in  Good, 
Yet  hope  to  stem  God's  fire  with  walls  of  tow. 

*'Time  Was  unlocks  the  riddle  of  Time  Is, 
That  offers  choice  of  glory  or  of  gloom; 
The  solver  makes  Time  Shall  Be  surely  his. 
But  hasten.  Sisters!  for  even  now  the  tomb 
-  Grates  its  slow  hinge  and  calls  from  the  abyss.*'' 

"But  not  for  him!"  I  cried,  "not  yet  for  him 
Whose  large  horizon  westering,  star  by  star 
Wins  from  the  void  to  where  on  Ocean's  rim 
The  sunset  shuts  the  world  with  golden  bar  — 
Not  yet  his  thews  shall  fail,  his  eye  grow  dim! 

**God  give  us  peace!  not  such  as  lulls  to  sleep. 
But  sword  on  thigh,  and  brow  with  purpose  knit! 
And  let  our  Ship  of  State  to  harbour  sweep. 
Her  ports  all  up,  her  battle-lanterns  lit. 
And  her  leashed  thunders  gathering  for  their  leap!" 

So  cried  I  with  clenched  hands  and  passionate  pain. 
Thinking  of  dear  ones  by  Potomac's  side;  — 
Again  the  loon  laughed  mocking,  and  again 
The  echoes  bayed  far  down  the  night  and  died. 
While  waking  I  recalled  my  wandering  brain. 

CHARLES  SUMNER  was  the  only  member  chosen  by  the 
Club  this  year.  Sumner  had  spoken  strongly  and  clearly 
on  the  matter  of  the  seizure  and  of  the  necessary  giving  up  to 
England  of  the  Confederate  emissaries.  Longfellow,  still  bowed 
down  with  his  loss,  wrote  to  his  friend  in  January:  "I  have  no 
heart  for  anything.  There  is  only  one  thought  in  my  mind.  You 
know  what  it  is.  .  .  .  We  will  not  speak  of  that,  but  rather  of 
your  admirable  speech  on  the  Trent  affair.  It  is  very  clear  and 
thorough  and  statesman-like.  Everybody  reads  it;  and  none 
reads  it  but  to  praise.  Curtis  was  here  yesterday  and  thinks  it 
admirable;  so  does  Norton;  so  does  T.  [Appleton];  so  does  Mrs. 
Kemble;  .  .  .  and  these,  with  one  or  two  newspaper  writers,  are 
my  'everybody.'" 

Another  loss  was  to  come  to  Longfellow  which  he  felt  greatly: 
"February  27th.    News  comes  of  Felton's  death  at  his  brother's 


i862  289 

In  Chester  [Pennsylvania].  I  go  down  to  see  Agassiz,  and  find  him 
in  much  distress.   Dear  good  Felton!  how  much  he  is  beloved!" 

Mr.  Felton  was  at  this  time  President  of  Harvard  University. 
May  8,  Longfellow  writes:  "Felton  is  universally  regretted.  He 
had  thousands  of  friends  and  not  one  enemy.  ...  He  had  a  wider 
range  of  scholarship  than  any  of  us;  and  his  nature  to  the  last  was 
pure,  genial,  and  sympathetic.  .  .  .  His  epitaph  has  been  written 
in  Greek  by  Sophocles,  himself  a  Greek  and  Professor  of  Greek 
in  the  University.  I  send  you  a  literal  translation;  like  the  original, 
it  is  in  the  elegiac,  or  hexameter  and  pentameter  metre:  — 

'Felton,  dearest  of  friends,  to  the  lands  unseen  thou  departest, 

Snatched  away,  thou  hast  left  sorrow  and  sighing  behind! 
On  thy  companions,  the  dear  ones,  alas!  the  affliction  has  fallen; 
Hellas,  of  thee  beloved,  misses  thy  beautiful  life.'" 

Not  many  days  after  President  Felton's  death,  Longfellow  had 
met  in  the  street  this  "strange,  eccentric  man,  with  his  blue  cloak 
and  wild,  gray  beard,  his  learning  and  his  silence.  He  makes 
Diogenes  a  possibility,"  he  adds.  He  brought  his  elegy  for  Fel- 
ton's gravestone,  requesting  Longfellow  to  render  it  in  English.^ 

During  the  last  exciting  year,  and  the  more  serious,  anxious 
one  that  now  had  begun,  as  the  friends  sat  at  table  it  sometimes 
happened  that  a  burst  of  martial  music  shattered  the  conversa- 
tion; they  left  their  seats  and  from  the  windows  saw  a  blue- 
coated  regiment,  the  colonel  and  staff  riding  at  their  head,  march 
below  them  from  the  State  House,  where  Governor  Andrew  had 
just  reviewed  them,  toward  the  wharf,  or  the  cars,  to  take  pas- 
sage for  the  seat  of  war.  Dr.  Holmes,  or  Mr.  Forbes,  or  Judge 
Hoar,  or  Mr.  Longfellow  might  have  seen  from  that  balcony  a  son, 

1  This  scholar-hermit,  bred  in  a  monastery  on  Mount  Athos,  by  strange  chance  trans- 
planted to  No.  3  Holworthy  Hall,  in  early  middle  age,  lived  and  died  there.  We,  who 
came  to  college  during  Felton's  presidency,  wondered  and  smiled  when  we  saw  this  Greek 
professor,  hardly  more  than  five  feet  high,  in  his  cloth  cap  and  cape,  taking  his  lonely 
walk;  but  when,  as  Juniors,  we  went  up  to  his  recitation  room  to  read  the  Alcestis,  the 
Seven  against  Thebes,  and  the  Antigone,  in  what  was  to  most  of  us  the  last  opportunity  to 
read  these  wonderful  works  in  the  original  as  literature,  as  inspiration,  we  could  not  be  too 
grateful  to  him  for  letting  us  alone,  not  tripping  us  up  at  each  sentence  with  fine  points 
of  grammar.  If  we  had  not  learned  them  in  three  years'  drill  in  school,  and  two  thus  far  in 
college,  we  never  should.  There  he  sat,  an  Olympian  Zeus.  The  smallness  of  his  stature 
was  hidden  by  the  desk,  but  the  splendid  iron-gray  head  and  beard,  the  dark  eyes,  deep- 
set  under  heavy  brows,  and  above  adequate  shoulders,  almost  seemed  a  presence  come 
from  Thebes  or  Athens  with  thoughts  beyond  "&v  with  the  optative." 


290  The  Saturday  Club 

Lowell  three  nephews,  or  Mr.  Appleton  his  half-brother,  march 
or  ride  past,  as  the  Twentieth  Massachusetts  Infantry,  the  First, 
also  the  Second  Cavalry,  the  Forty-eighth  Infantry,  or  the  Fifth 
Light  Battery  passed.  Two  of  these  sons,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes, 
Jr.,  and  Samuel  Hoar,  and  two  of  Mr.  Forbes's  grandsons  (sons 
of  Colonel  William  H.  Forbes)  later  became  members  of  the  Club. 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.  (his  father  did  not  become  a  member 
of  the  Club  until  1870),  was  Captain  in  the  First  Massachusetts 
Cavalry,  later.  Colonel  of  the  Fifth.  The  two  younger  sons  of 
Henry  James  ^  (chosen  a  member  the  following  year)  enlisted  in 
this  year,  and  in  1863  were  officers  respectively  in  the  Fifty-fourth 
and  Fifty-fifth  Massachusetts  Regiments  (coloured) :  — 

Ah!  many  a  soldier  in  those  ranks 

How  few  months  since  was  deemed  a  boy. 

Of  later  members  —  not  hereditary  so  to  speak  —  Charles  R. 
Codman  was  Colonel  of  the  Forty-fifth  Massachusetts  Infantry; 
Francis  A.  Walker  was  Assistant  Adjutant-General  on  the  staff 
of  the  successive  commanders  of  the  Second  Army  Corps,  Sum- 
ner, Couch,  and  Hancock;  Henry  L.  Higginson  was  Major,  and 
Henry  P.  Bowditch  Captain,  in  the  First  Massachusetts  Cavalry, 
the  latter  afterward  Major  in  the  Fifth;  Theodore  Lyman  was 
invited  by  General  Meade  commanding  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
to  serve  on  his  staff  with  the  rank  of  Lieutenant-Colonel,  and 
did  excellent  service;  John  C.  Gray  served,  first,  as  A.D.C.  to 
General  Gordon,  later  as  Major  and  Judge-Advocate  on  the  staffs 
of  Generals  Foster  and  Gilmore;  Edward  W.  Hooper  as  Captain 
and  A.D.C.  on  the  staffs  of  Generals  Saxton  and  Dix;  Charles 
S.  Sargent  on  the  staffs  of  Generals  Banks  and  Hurlburt,  and 
finally  with  the  rank  of  Captain  on  that  of  General  Granger. 

The  Saturday  Club  cannot  claim  to  have  sent  William  Thomas 
Sampson  into  the  Navy  as  its  representative,  but  after  another 
war  they  welcomed  the  victorious  Admiral  as  a  member  —  unhap- 
pily to  die  all  too  soon. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  our  good  and  great  War-Gover- 
nor, John  Albion  Andrew,  was  ex  officio  Commander-in-Chief  of 

*  Garth  Wilkinson  James  and  Robertson  James. 


i862  291 

the  Massachusetts  troops.  With  forethought,  wisdom,  and  force, 
he  raised,  reenforced,  and  provided  for  them,  nor  did  he  forget 
them  when  they  passed  under  the  United  States'  command.  In 
this  service  he  spent  for  this  country  in  a  few  years  the  strength 
that  should  have  carried  him  to  old  age. 

Mr.  Emerson  had  evidently  been  reading  Dr.  Holmes's  "My 
Hunt  after  'The  Captain ' "  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  when  he  wrote 
in  his  journal:  "What  a  convivial  talent  is  that  of  Wendell  Holmes! 
He  is  still  at  his  Club,  when  he  travels  in  search  of  his  wounded 
son;  has  the  same  delight  in  his  perceptions,  in  his  wit,  in  its  effect, 
which  he  watches  as  a  belle  the  effect  of  her  beauty;  would  still 
hold  each  companion  fast  by  his  sprightly,  sparkling,  widely-allu- 
sive talk,  as  at  the  Club  table;  tastes  all  his  own  talent,  calculates 
every  stroke,  and  yet  the  fountain  is  unfailing,  the  wit  excellent, 
the  scwoir  vivre  and  savoir  parler  admirable." 

Yet  Holmes  was  very  human  in  his  affections  and  stirred  to  the 
depths  by  his  Country's  cause  and  needs,  and  the  way  the  best 
youth  of  the  North  had  risen  and  were  to  rise  to  the  occasion. 
These  lines  from  his  poem  at  the  annual  Harvard  holiday  show 
his  feelings:  — 

"  *  Old  classmate,  say, 

Do  you  remember  our  Commencement  day? 
Were  we  such  boys  as  these  at  twenty?'   Nay. 
God  called  them  to  a  nobler  task  than  ours, 
And  gave  them  holier  thoughts  and  manlier  powers. 
These  'boys'  we  talk  about  like  ancient  sages 
Are  the  same  men  we  read  of  in  old  pages. 
The  bronze  recast  of  dead  heroic  ages." 

But  now  came  the  mortality  list  of  the  bloody  battles  of  the 
Seven  Days  in  the  Peninsula,  in  General  McClellan's  change  of 
base,  followed  by  his  temporary  deposition,  and  in  Pope's  defeat 
at  the  Second  Bull  Run,  The  Country  was  alarmed;  volunteering 
was  slow.  Dr.  Holmes  came  to  the  rescue  with  his  "Never  or 
Now,"  an  appeal  which  surely  stirred  the  blood  and  sent  to  the 
ranks  at  all  risks  many  a  generous  boy. 

"Listen,  young  heroes!  your  Country  is  calling! 
Time  strikes  the  hour  for  the  brave  and  the  true! 


292  The  Saturday  Club 

Now,  while  the  foremost  are  fighting  and  falling, 
Fill  up  the  ranks  that  have  opened  for  you ! 

"  You  whom  the  fathers  made  free  and  defended, 
Stain  not  the  scroll  that  emblazons  their  fame! 
You  whose  fair  heritage  spotless  descended, 
Leave  not  your  children  a  birthright  of  shame! 

"  Stay  not  for  questions  while  Freedom  stands  gasping! 
Wait  not  till  Honour  lies  wrapped  in  his  pall! 
Brief  the  lips'  meeting  be,  swift  the  hands'  clasping,  — 
'Off  for  the  wars!'  is  enough  for  them  all. 

"Break  from  the  arms  that  would  fondly  caress  you! 
Hark!  't  is  the  bugle-blast,  sabres  are  drawn! 
Mothers  shall  pray  for  you,  fathers  shall  bless  you. 
Maidens  shall  weep  for  you  when  you  are  gone! 

"Never  or  now!  cries  the  blood  of  a  nation, 

Poured  on  the  turf  where  the  red  rose  should  bloom; 
Now  is  the  day  and  the  hour  of  salvation,  — 
Never  or  now!  peals  the  trumpet  of  doom! 

"Never  or  now!  roars  the  hoarse  throated  cannon 
Through  the  black  canopy  blotting  the  skies; 
Never  or  now!  flaps  the  shell-blasted  pennon 
O'er  the  deep  ooze  where  the  Cumberland  lies! 

"From  the  foul  dens  where  our  brothers  are  dying. 
Aliens  and  foes  in  the  land  of  their  birth,  — 
From  the  rank  swamps  where  our  martyrs  are  lying 
Pleading  in  vain  for  a  handful  of  earth,  — 

"  From  the  hot  plains  where  they  perish  outnumbered, 
Furrowed  and  ridged  by  the  battle-field's  plough. 
Comes  the  loud  summons:  Too  long  you  have  slumbered. 
Hear  the  last  Angel-trump,  —  Never  or  now!" 

The  capture  of  the  highly  important  harbour  of  Port  Royal 
had  caused  a  flight  of  the  planters  on  the  Sea  Islands.  Their  slaves 
for  the  most  part  remained.  Agents  were  sent  by  the  Govern- 
ment to  take  possession  of  the  valuable  cotton  crop,  and  to  see 
to  the  planting  of  a  new  one.  At  the  same  time  an  Educational 
Commission  was  formed  by  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson  to  protect  and 
improve  the  helpless  black  population,  Edward  L.   Pierce  of 


i862  293 

Milton  at  the  head  of  it,  and  Mr.  Forbes  interested  and  helpful. 
Among  the  young  men  and  women  in  this  missionary  work,  which 
was  then  unpopular,  was  our  member  Edward  W.  Hooper,  whose 
quiet  force  and  ability  caused  him  to  be  placed  by  General  Rufus 
Saxton  on  his  staff  with  rank  of  Captain.  The  increasing  difficulty 
of  recruiting  at  the  North,  the  multitude  of  unemployed  black 
men  within  our  lines,  and  the  importance  to  the  South,  in  working 
to  feed  their  armies,  of  those  who  stayed  on  the  plantations,  all 
pointed  to  the  obvious  measure  of  raising  negro  regiments,  a  meas- 
ure about  which  the  Government  was  timid.  In  Mr.  Forbes's 
journal  he  wrote:  "  In  that  summer  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  getting 
up  the  Committee  of  a  Hundred  for  promoting  the  use  of  blacks 
as  soldiers.  .  .  .  We  raised,  I  think,  about  ^100,000  by  subscrip- 
tion among  the  most  conservative  Republicans.  The  first  two 
Massachusetts  regiments  of  coloured  troops  were  in  course  of 
formation.  .  .  ."  With  a  view  of  weakening  and  alarming  the 
enemy,  recruiting  offices  were  opened  near  the  Border,  to  attract 
slaves  and  freedmen,  by  the  patriotic  George  L.  Stearns,  of  Med- 
ford,  commissioned  Major  for  this  purpose  by  Governor  Andrew. 
Such  measures  prepared  public  opinion  for  the  Emancipation, 
which,  on  the  23  d  of  September,  Lincoln  proclaimed,  to  take  effect 
with  the  opening  year.  Now  one  reads  a  little  sadly  this  letter, 
written  on  that  day  by  Norton  to  George  William  Curtis,  when 
we  consider  the  present  condition  of  the  coloured  race,  and  the 
attitude  of  so  many  of  our  people  towards  them.  Norton  wrote :  — 

"God  be  praised!  I  can  hardly  see  to  write  —  for  when  I  think 
of  this  great  act  of  Freedom,  and  all  it  implies,  my  heart  and  my 
eyes  overflow  with  the  deepest,  most  serious  gratitude.  ...  I  think 
to-day  that  the  world  is  glorified  by  the  spirit  of  Christ.  How 
beautiful  it  is  to  be  able  to  read  the  sacred  words  under  this  new 
light:  *He  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  de- 
liverance to  the  captives  and  recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind,  to  set 
at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of 
the  Lord.'   The  war  is  paid  for." 

Brownell,  the  war-poet  of  whose  introduction  to  the  Club  by 
Holmes  the  next  year's  story  tells,  voiced  the  eager  hope  that  tens 
of  thousands  of  our  Northern  people,  not  yet  free  from  anxiety 


2  94  The  Saturday  Club 

as  to  the  President's  action,  were  feeling.    I  quote  some  verses 
from  his  appealing  poem:  — 

"Men  may  march  and  manoeuvre 
And  camp  on  fields  of  death  — 
The  Iron  Saurians  wheel  and  dart, 
And  thunder  their  fiery  breath  — 

"But  one  brave  word  is  wanting, 
The  word  whose  tone  should  start 
The  pulses  of  men  to  flamelets, 
Thrilling  through  every  heart. 

"O  Father,  trust  thy  children;  — 
If  ever  you  found  them  fail 
'T  was  but  for  the  lack  of  the  one  just  word 
Which  must  in  the  end  prevail. 


"  Is  it  yet  forgotten  of  Shiloh 

And  the  long  outnumbered  lines. 

How  the  blue  frocks  lay  in  winrows? 

How  they  died  at  Seven  Pines  ? 

"How  they  sank  in  the  Varuna 
(Seven  foes  in  flame  around!) 
How  they  went  down  in  the  Cumberland 
Firing,  cheering  as  they  drowned?  , 

"And  never  fear  but  the  living 

Shall  stand,  to  the  last,  by  thee  — 
They  shall  yet  make  up  a  million, 
And  another,  if  need  there  be! 

"  But  fail  not,  as  thy  trust  is  Heaven, 
To  breathe  the  word  shall  wake         ' 
The  holiest  fire  of  a  Nation's  heart  — 
Speak  it,  for  Christ's  dear  sake!" 

In  the  sketch  of  Mr.  Norton  an  account  has  been  given  of  a 
wonderfully  successful  enterprise  conducted  by  him  and  Professor 
James  B.  Thayer  in  influencing  healthy  public  opinion  through- 
out the  land,  the  Loyal  Publication  Society.  Mr.  Forbes  was  the 
prime  mover. 

In  this  year  patriotic  and  liberal  measures  like  these  were 


i862  295 

greatly  forwarded  by  the  Union  Club.  Up  to  this  time  the  only 
important  club  in  Boston  of  solid  and  well-to-do  Bostonians  had 
been  the  Somerset,  but  its  tone  was  of  patrician  conservatism, 
only  slowly  moved  by  the  rapid  march  of  events  and  the  corre- 
sponding needs  of  the  Country;  yet  the  fathers  were  being  edu- 
cated by  their  sons  at  the  front.  Many  of  our  members  were  active 
in  establishing  the  Union  Club,  like  Mr.  Ward,  Mr.  Brimmer, 
Mr.  Woodman,  Mr.  Norton,  and  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe.  But  the 
emancipation  from  the  old  pro-slavery  "Hunkerism"  of  Boston 
was  most  cheering.  Earlier  in  the  year  Longfellow  had  written 
to  Sumner:  "You  are  hard  at  work,  and  God  bless  you  in  it!  In 
every  country  the  'dangerous  classes'  are  those  who  do  no  work; 
for  instance,  the  nobility  in  Europe,  and  the  slave-holders  here. 
It  is  evident  that  the  world  needs  a  new  nobility  —  not  of  the 
gold  medal  and  sangre  azul  order;  not  of  the  blood  that  is  blue 
because  it  stagnates;  but  of  the  red  arterial  blood  that  circulates, 
and  has  heart  in  it,  and  life,  and  labour." 

Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  who,  in  the  previous  year,  had  personally 
urged  the  President  to  proclaim  Emancipation  as  an  act  of  jus- 
tice and  policy,  and  formed  an  association  here  to  promote  the 
movement,  among  whom  our  later  members  Edmund  Quincy 
and  James  Freeman  Clarke  were  numbered,  had  foreseen  the 
next  step.  From  Washington  he  wrote  to  Francis  W.  Bird:  "It 
seems  to  me  that  what  we  want  now  is  a  knowledge  of  the  actual 
condition  of  the  freedmen.  We  must  be  able  to  present  in  Decem- 
ber ...  a  general  and  reliable  coup  (Tceil  of  those  who  are  actually 
out  of  the  house  of  bondage,  their  wants,  and  their  capacities.  .  .  . 
I  will  do  what  I  can  here,  .  .  .  and  should  like  to  join  you  and 
give  personal  attention  to  their  condition  at  Fortress  Monroe  and 
elsewhere.  Meantime  do  something  immediately  and  earnestly  to 
stir  up  our  Emancipation  League." 

More  and  more  the  Country  came  to  feel  that  the  war  was  not 
against  Secession,  but  for  human  rights  and  democracy  against 
slavery  and  oligarchy.  Our  quiet,  but  eager  and  brave  Quaker 
Whittier  celebrated  in  his  "At  Port  Royal"  the  blessing  to  the 
slaves  that  its  capture  by  our  guns  had  brought.  Holmes  wrote 
his  hymn  with  the  tramp  of  armies  in  it,  beginning,  — 


296  'The  Saturday  Club 

"  Flag  of  the  heroes  who  left  us  their  glory 
Borne  through  the  battlefields'  thunder  and  flame." 

McClellan's  sharp  check  to  Lee's  invasion  of  the  North  at 
Antietam  cheered  our  people,  and,  in  spite  of  the  heavy  losses, 
they  were  proud  of  the  steady  valour  that  our  soldiers  showed. 
Even  the  wasteful  slaughter  at  Fredericksburg  at  the  close  of  the 
year  had  this  consoling  element. 

Again  I  yield  to  the  temptation  to  quote  from  Brownell's  Som- 
nia  Cceli,  written  just  after  that  sacrifice  of  our  young  heroes:  — 

"  Come,  battle  of  stormiest  breath 
O'er  meadow  and  hillside  brown, 
The  long  lines  sweeping  up  to  death 
Mid  thunder  from  trench  and  town  — 


"Ah!  never  in  vain,  our  brothers, 
That  dark  December  day 
For  the  Truth,  and  for  hope  to  others, 
By  slope  and  by  trench  ye  lay. 

"Did  we  deem  't  was  woe  and  pity 
That  there  in  your  flower  ye  died? 
Ah,  fond !  —  the  Celestial  City 
Her  portal  fair  flung  wide. 

"The  colours  ye  bore  in  vain  that  day 
Yet  wave  o'er  Heaven's  recruits  — 
And  are  trooped  by  Aidenn's  starriest  Gate 
While  the  Flaming  Sword  salutes." 

And  yet  our  people  had  to  wait  through  a  dreary  winter  and 
endure  another  serious  defeat  in  spring,  before  the  tide  of  the  mili- 
tant Confederacy  reached  its  far  northern  limit,  and  was  turned 
at  Gettysburg. 


CHARLES  SUMNER 

No  adequate  sketch  of  Charles  Sumner's  public  career  could  be 
compressed  within  the  limits  allotted  to  a  single  memoir  in  this 
volume,  and  for  this  the  reader  must  be  referred  to  his  biographies 
which  are  easily  accessible.  It  is  enough  here  briefly  to  recapitu- 
late a  few  salient  facts. 

He  was  born  at  Boston  in  1811  and  died  at  Washington  in 
1874.  His  first  contribution  to  the  discussion  of  public  questions 
was  on  July  4,  1845,  when  he  delivered  his  oration  on  "The  True 
Grandeur  of  Nations."  He  took  no  active  part  in  politics  or  in 
anti-slavery  agitation  until  he  was  roused  by  the  annexation  of 
Texas.  His  first  political  speech  was  made  at  the  Whig  Conven- 
tion in  Massachusetts  on  September  23,  1846,  and  he  was  elected 
to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  in  April,  1851.  He  was  as- 
saulted by  Preston  S.  Brooks  on  May  22,  1856,  and  from  that 
time  was  an  invalid  spending  most  of  his  time  in  Europe  where  he 
underwent  very  severe  treatment,  and  taking  no  active  part  in 
the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  until  June  4,  i860,  when  he  de- 
livered his  great  speech  entitled  "The  Barbarism  of  Slavery." 
From  then  until  General  Grant  became  President  in  1869  he  was 
the  recognized  leader  of  the"  Senate  on  all  questions  of  foreign  re- 
lations and  in  the  contest  against  Slavery  in  all  its  aspects.  The 
course  of  the  President  in  urging  the  annexation  of  San  Domingo 
brought  him  into  opposition,  and  he  was  removed  from  his  posi- 
tion as  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations 
in  March,  1871.  The  struggle  over  the  San  Domingo  question  was 
very  bitter,  and  this,  with  the  consequent  alienation  from  party 
leaders  and  former  friends,  subjected  him  to  a  severe  strain  which 
resulted  in  an  attack  of  angina  pectoris,  and  from  that  time, 
though  he  continued  at  work  with  brief  intervals  until  the  last, 
he  was  in  fact  an  invalid  until  his  death  in  March,  1874. 

This  bare  outline  of  a  great  life  is  interesting  if  only  because  it 
shows  in  how  few  years  his  work  was  done.  Until  he  was  thirty- 
five  years  old  the  evils  of  Slavery  never  roused  him  to  oppose  it. 


298  "The  Saturday  Club 

He  was  forty  years  old  when  he  entered  the  Senate,  and  of  the 
twenty-three  years  which  elapsed  from  then  until  his  death  he  was 
disabled  for  a  third  of  the  time.  What  he  did  for  his  country  was 
done  in  sixteen  years,  during  six  of  which  he  was  one  of  a  small 
minority,  and  as  he  never  held  executive  office,  his  results  were 
accompUshed  only  by  speech  and  vote. 

His  connection  with  the  Saturday  Club  began  with  his  election 
in  1862,  and  as  its  meetings  were  suspended  during  the  summer 
months,  and  he  was  as  a  rule  in  Washington  during  the  rest  of  the 
year,  he  cannot  have  been  present  regularly  at  its  dinners.  Mr. 
Pierce  in  his  very  full  biography  chronicles  Sumner's  election  to 
the  Club,  and  mentions  his  dining  with  it  as  a  guest  on  April  27, 
i860,  and  as  a  member  at  various  times  when  in  Boston  during 
the  recesses  of  Congress  in  1864,  1865,  and  in  1873,  but  except 
that  Mr.  Chase  was  a  guest  of  the  Club  in  1864,  and  William  W. 
Story  was  at  a  dinner  in  1865,  he  tells  us  nothing  of  interest. 
From  Sumner's  voluminous  correspondence  no  reference  to  the 
Club  is  preserved,  but  in  a  letter  from  Professor  Agassiz,  written 
on  December  20,  1863,  we  find:  "Longfellow  promised  to  come 
back  to  the  Club  next  Saturday.  I  wish  you  were  with  us;  we 
shall  drink  your  health.  Answer  in  thought  when  you  go  to  your 
dinner  that  day,  the  26th  of  December";  and  Emerson  recorded 
in  his  diary,  early  in  the  Civil  War,  after  a  Club  dinner,  "  Sumner 
was  there.  He  is  beginning  to  feel  his  oats." 

This  is  a  slight  contribution  to  the  history  of  the  Club,  but  it 
seems  an  appropriate  opportunity  to  deal  with  a  side  of  Sumner's 
nature  which  has  often  been  misrepresented.  One  orator  has  said, 
"His  manners  were  applauded  as  perfect  in  most  of  the  drawing- 
rooms  of  Europe,  yet  in  Washington  he  can  scarcely  be  said  to 
have  exhibited  a  democratic,  or  even  a  genial  nature";  and,  "His 
lack  of  even  the  usual  little  courtesies  to  the  other  sex  was  a  by- 
word among  his  friends";  while  a  historian  whom  we  all  admire 
has  summed  up  his  social  side  briefly  by  saying,  "He  was  vain, 
conceited,  fond  of  flattery,  overbearing  in  manner,  and  he  wore  a 
constant  air  of  superiority." 

One  may  be  permitted  to  suspect  that  none  of  these  critics  had 
any  personal  acquaintance  with  their  victim,  but  derived  their 


Charles  Sumner  299 

impressions  from  Sumner's  political  or  personal  opponents  rather 
than  from  those  who  knew  him  well.  European  standards  are 
much  misrepresented  if  a  gentleman's  manners  are  regarded  as 
perfect  in  foreign  drawing-rooms  when  they  "lack  even  the  usual 
little  courtesies"  to  ladies,  nor  could  Sumner  have  been  welcome 
to  the  Saturday  Club  if  his  bearing  towards  his  fellow-men  had 
been  what  the  historian  describes.  The  real  facts  may  be  stated 
briefly  and  there  is  an  abundance  of  testimony  to  support  the 
statement. 

Sumner  was  by  nature  essentially  simple,  sincere,  affectionate, 
and  kindly,  and  in  the  words  of  a  classmate  he  was  possessed  by 
a  "  life-and-death  earnestness,"  Whatever  he  did,  he  did  with  his 
might.  He  was  ambitious  at  first  to  acquire  knowledge,  and  he  thus 
described  his  plan  of  life  In  the  Law  School:  "Six  hours,  namely, 
the  forenoon,  wholly  and  solely  to  law;  afternoon  to  classics; 
evening  to  history,  subjects  collateral  and  assistant  to  law,  etc. 
.  .  .  Recreation  must  not  be  found  In  Idleness  or  loose  reading." 
He  believed  that  "a  lawyer  must  know  everything,"  and  he  read 
early  and  late  until  his  inflamed  eyes  and  his  complexion  showed 
the  effects  of  excessive  labour.  At  this  time  he  was  constantly  at 
the  house  of  Judge  Story,  whose  son,  our  member,  William  Wet- 
more  Story,  wrote  of  him:  "His  simplicity  and  directness  of  char- 
acter, his  enthusiasm  and  craving  for  Information,  his  lively  spirit 
and  genial  feeling,  immediately  made  a  strong  impression  on  me. 
.  .  .  He  was  free,  natural,  and  naive  in  his  simplicity,  and  plied 
my  father  with  an  ever-flowing  stream  of  questions,  and  I  need 
not  say  that  the  responses  were  as  full  and  genial  as  heart  and 
mind  could  desire.  .  .  .  He  was  at  this  time  totally  without  vanity, 
and  only  desirous  to  acquire  knowledge  and  information  on  every 
subject.  .  .  ." 

President  Quincy's  daughter,  Mrs.  Waterston,  said  of  him: 
"This  youth,  though  not  in  the  least  handsome,  Is  so  good- 
hearted,  clever,  and  real,  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  like  him  and 
believe  In  him."  The  daughter  of  Mr.  Peters,  the  reporter  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  said  of  him,  after  meeting  him  In  Philadelphia 
where  he  was  visiting:  "He  was  then  a  great,  tall,  lank  creature, 
quite  heedless  of  the  form  and  fashion  of  his  garb;  'unsophisti- 


300  The  Saturday  Club 

cated,'  everybody  said,  and  oblivious  to  the  propriety  of  wearing 
a  hat  in  a  city,  going  about  in  a  rather  shabby  fur  cap:  but  the 
fastidiousness  of  fashionable  ladies  was  utterly  routed  by  the 
wonderful  charm  of  his  conversation,  and  he  was  carried  about 
triumphantly  and  introduced  to  all  the  distinguished  people, 
young  and  old,  who  then  made  Philadelphia  society  so  brilliant. 
No  amount  of  honeying,  however,  could  then  affect  him.  His  sim- 
plicity, his  perfect  naturalness  was  what  struck  every  one,  com- 
bined with  his  rare  culture  and  his  delicious  youthful  enthusiasm. 
.  .  .  There  was  a  sweetness  and  tenderness  of  character  about 
him,  and  an  entire  unworldliness,  that  won  all  hearts."  A  witness 
of  the  opposite  sex  describes  him  at  this  time  as  "modest  and 
deferential." 

When  he  was  about  twenty-seven  years  old  he  went  abroad  and 
stayed  there  for  more  than  two  years,  during  which  time  he  saw 
in  France,  in  Germany,  in  Italy,  and  in  England  almost  everybody 
that  was  then  worth  knowing.  While  he  carried  letters,  he  rarely 
presented  them,  saying  in  a  letter  to  Judge  Story,  "Since  I  have 
been  here  I  have  followed  a  rigid  rule  with  regard  to  my  conduct: 
I  have  not  asked  an  introduction  to  any  person;  not  a  single  ticket, 
privilege,  or  anything  of  the  kind  from  any  one;  I  have  not  called 
upon  anybody  (with  one  exception)  until  I  had  been  first  called 
upon  or  invited." 

Mr.  Abraham  Hayward  at  that  time  spoke  of  his  "entire  ab- 
sence of  pretension,"  and  added:  "Sumner's  social  success  at 
this  early  period,  before  his  reputation  was  established,  was  most 
remarkable.  He  was  welcome  guest  at  most  of  the  best  houses 
both  in  town  and  country,  and  the  impression  he  uniformly  left 
was  that  of  an  amiable,  sensible,  high-minded,  well-informed  gen- 
tleman." 

Lady  Wharncliffe  said:  "I  never  knew  an  American  who  had 
the  degree  of  social  success  he  had;  owing  I  think  to  the  real 
elevation  and  worth  of  his  character,  his  genuine  nobleness  of 
thought  and  aspiration,  his  kindliness  of  heart,  his  absence  of 
dogmatism  and  oratorical  display,  his  genuine  amiability,  his 
cultivation  of  mind,  and  his  appreciation  of  England  without 
anything  approaching  to  flattery  of  ourselves  or  depreciation  of 


Charles  Sumner  301 

his  own  country."  Mrs.  Parks,  granddaughter  of  Dr.  Priestley, 
wrote  In  1876:  "It  was  said,  after  Mr.  Sumner's  northern  journey, 
that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  all  the  principal  Whig  families 
on  the  way  north  and  of  the  Tories  on  his  return.  He  was  enor- 
mously popular,  almost  like  a  meteor  passing  through  the  coun- 
try, young,  agreeable,  full  of  information,  he  entertained  every 
one.  He  bore  the  ovation  well  and  modestly."  Pierce  in  his  bio- 
graphy devotes  some  three  hundred  pages  to  Sumner's  European 
experiences  which  abundantly  confirm  the  opinion  of  these  wit- 
nesses. 

A  man  is  known  by  the  company  he  keeps,  and  Sumner's  inti- 
mate friends  in  Boston,  Longfellow,  Felton,  Hillard,  and  Cleve- 
land, who  with  him  formed  "the  Five  of  Clubs,"  Dr.  Samuel  G. 
Howe,  and  many  others  who  might  be  named,  were  (all  but  Fel- 
ton, and  perhaps  Hillard,  who  fell  away  during  the  anti-slavery 
agitation)  warm  and  intimate  friends  of  Sumner  during  their 
lives,  and  it  is  certain  that  they  would  not  have  taken  to  their 
hearts  a  man  such  as  Sumner  is  said  to  have  been  in  the  passages 
that  have  been  quoted.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  contemporary 
testimony  as  to  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration,  delivered  in  August, 
1846,  entitled  "The  Scholar,  the  Jurist,  the  Artist,  the  Philan- 
thropist," which  was  in  fact  a  tribute  to  John  Pickering,  Judge 
Story,  Washington  Allston,  and  William  Ellery  Channing.  To  us 
of  modern  taste  it  seems  somewhat  grandiloquent  and  turgid, 
but  Edward  Everett  said  of  it:  "It  was  an  amazingly  splendid 
affair.  I  never  heard  it  surpassed.  I  don't  know  that  I  ever  heard 
it  equalled";  while  Mr.  Emerson  wrote  in  his  diary  on  the  evening 
of  the  day,  "At  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  Sumner's  oration  was  marked 
by  a  certain  magnificence  which  I  do  not  well  know  how  to  paral- 
lel." This  testimony  certainly  comes  from  the  most  competent 
judges.  George  Hoar,  then  graduating,  said:  "Sumner  held  and 
delighted  his  hearers  to  the  close,"  though  he  spoke  "nearly  or 
quite  three  hours.  His  magnificent  person  was  in  the  prime  of  its 
beauty.  His  deep  voice  had  not  then  the  huskiness  which  It  had 
in  later  years";  to  which  may  be  added  the  testimony  of  a  lady: 
"He  seemed  to  me  a  new  Demosthenes  or  Cicero,  even  like  a 
Grecian  god,  as  he  stood  on  the  platform.    I  thought  him  the 


302  T'he  Saturday  Club 

handsomest  and  the  finest-looking  man  I  had  ever  seen."  Such 
he  was  when  he  entered  public  life,  already  much  changed  from 
the  youth  of  the  shabby  fur  cap,  a  welcome  guest  everywhere,  and 
flattered  by  every  one. 

From  this  tim.e  until  he  was  elected  to  the  Senate  he  was  en- 
gaged in  a  bitter  contest  against  the  aggression  of  Slavery,  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  and  the  Mexican  War,  into  which  he  threw 
himself  with  all  his  might.  When  he  entered  the  Senate  he  came 
as  the  representative  of  a  great  and  unpopular  cause  already  dis- 
liked by  many  former  friends  in  Massachusetts.  His  course  there 
roused  bitter  hostility,  his  friends  at  home  fell  away  from  him, 
his  colleagues  in  the  Senate  insulted  him,  and  this  undoubtedly 
caused  him  very  acute  suffering,  but  it  never  affected  his  action 
in  the  least.  It  none  the  less  must  have  added  intensity  to  his 
earnestness  and  have  coloured  his  whole  life.  A  man  of  impressive 
figure  and  marked  personal  beauty,  of  cultivated  taste  in  literature 
and  art,  wrapped  up  in  the  work  of  his  life  and  intensely  earnest, 
from  his  very  nature  he  must  have  been  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
politicians  who  haunt  the  cloak-rooms  and  lobbies  of  Washington 
and  engage  in  the  conversation  which  there  prevails.  Sumner  did 
not  smoke,  and  he  kept  his  seat  in  the  Senate,  watching  con- 
stantly all  that  went  on.  As  has  been  frequently  pointed  out,  his 
sense  of  humour  was  not  acute,  and  he  naturally  impressed,  to  their 
annoyance,  many  of  his  associates  as  their  superior,  not  because 
he  affected  any  air  of  superiority,  but  because  he  was  in  fact 
superior  in  taste,  in  purpose,  in  his  whole  atmosphere. 

I  may  add  a  word  of  personal  testimony,  for  I  lived  in  his  house 
for  two  years.  I  sat  in  his  library  and  saw  him  receive  men  of  every 
rank,  race,  and  colour.  I  was  myself  young  and  at  the  time  sen- 
sitive to  any  affectation  of  superiority,  and  I  was  struck  with  the 
gracious  courtesy  with  which  Mr.  Sumner  uniformly  received  his 
numerous  visitors.  He  was  no  respecter  of  persons,  but  his  man- 
ners were  natural  and  kind.  Senator  Conkling,  though  I  saw  him 
only  as  a  young  man  sees  a  Senator,  used  to  irritate  me  daily  by 
the  way  in  which  he  treated,  not  me,  but  his  colleagues  in  the 
Senate.  There  was  about  him  an  assumption  which  was  most 
insulting,  but  nothing  of  the  sort  characterized  Mr.   Sumner. 


Charles  Sumner  303 

Can  there  be  better  evidence  than  the  testimony  of  an  English 
visitor  who  said,  "He  is  a  man  to  whom  all  children  come." 

There  is  a  tradition  at  the  Club  that  he  was  dominant  in  con- 
versation. It  is  perhaps  natural  that,  being  at  the  centre  of  affairs 
and  familiar  with  all  that  was  happening  at  the  greatest  crisis  in 
this  country's  history,  he  should  have  believed  that  what  he  had 
to  tell  the  Club  would  interest  them,  and  that  he  was  inclined  to 
talk  and  perhaps  interrupt  others  in  order  to  secure  attention  to 
what  he  considered  valuable,  but  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  also 
that  there  were  other  members  of  the  Club  who  liked  to  enlighten 
their  fellow-members,  and  who  perhaps  did  not  enjoy  active  com- 
petition. Even  the  story-teller  at  a  dinner-party  wants  to  have 
the  whole  company  listen.  But  at  his  own  table,  where  he  enter- 
tained constantly,  he  did  not  dominate,  but  was  a  courteous  and 
gracious  host.  He  was  in  essence  a  gentleman,  he  was  used  to  the 
society  of  ladies,  and  from  some  familiarity  with  his  friends  of  all 
sorts  I  can  say  with  confidence  that  it  was  not  and  could  not  have 
been  a  byword  among  them  that  he  in  any  way  lacked  courtesy 
to  ladies.  I  am  glad  to  bear  this  testimony,  which  comes  from  such 
an  intimate  acquaintance  as  a  young  man  acquires  with  an  older 
one  in  whose  daily  society  he  lived  for  nearly  two  years,  whom  he 
saw  in  the  privacy  of  his  library,  in  the  Senate,  as  a  host  in  his  own 
house,  and  in  almost  every  relation  of  life  with  men  and  women. 

I  recall  too  many  instances  of  his  kindly  thought  for  myself  and 
others  not  to  feel  that  his  essential  nature  has  been  much  misrep- 
resented. His  lack  of  humour  doubtless  helped  to  impair  his 
perspective  and  his  sense  of  relative  value.  His  intense  earnest- 
ness led  him  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  happenings  which 
interested  him.  To  like  flattery  is,  like  every  other  taste  for  sweets, 
common  to  us  all,  but  deleterious  if  over-indulged.  It  is  recorded 
of  another  very  eminent  member  of  the  Club  that  by  his  own  con- 
fession he  liked  his  praise  administered,  when  he  was  young,  with 
a  teaspoon,  in  middle  life  with  a  tablespoon,  and  in  his  later  years 
with  a  ladle.  We  may  not  like  to  be  flattered  too  openly,  but  who 
will  dare  to  say  that  praise  from  Sir  Hubert  Stanley,  or  even  less 
eminent  critics,  administered  judiciously,  is  not  most  grateful,  no 
matter  how  large  the  dose  in  which  it  is  given.  Mr.  Sumner  liked 


304  'The  Saturday  Club 

praise  and  doubtless  felt  that  he  deserved  it.  This  foible  is  after  all 
"the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds." 

It  remains  to  add  the  testimony  of  friends,  and  Sumner's  were 
the  best  in  the  community.  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  brave  and  unselfish 
as  man  can  be,  whose  life  was  one  long  blessing  to  humanity,  was 
devoted  to  him.  Richard  H.  Dana  quotes  him  thus,  "He  thinks 
Sumner  has  suffered  as  much  as  a  man  can  suffer,  and  has  been 
forbearing  and  generous."  When  he  left  his  house  in  Hancock 
Street  he  said  to  Longfellow,  "I  have  buried  from  this  house  my 
father,  my  mother,  a  brother,  and  a  sister,  and  now  I  am  leaving 
it,  the  deadest  of  them  all." 

In  telling  of  her  father's  friendship.  Dr.  Howe's  daughter,  Mrs. 
Richards,  writes:  "The  relation  between  him  and  Sumner  was  a 
peculiarly  close  and  tender  one.  'Charlie'  was  his  brother,  his 
alter  ego:  to  him  he  poured  out  his  inmost  thoughts.  Where  others 
saw  the  grave  statesman,  weighty,  self-contained,  and — one  must 
add  —  self-conceited,  he  saw  a  creature  of  light,  a  poet,  a  being 
all  beauty  and  nobility.  Yet  he  never  faltered  in  his  duty,  when 
it  called  him  to  smite  the  friend  of  his  heart.  In  fact,  the  two 
hammered  at  each  other,  always  lovingly,  but  sometimes  deal- 
ing tremendous  blows.  When  Sumner  and  Felton  quarrelled,  it 
was  Dr.  Howe  who  tried  to  heal  the  breach  between  them;  I  think 
he  finally  succeeded,  in  a  measure  at  least.  The  letters  which  I  hope 
to  send  will  tell  of  this.  He  was  always  a  peacemaker,  though 
himself  such  a  'bonny  fighter.'" 

From  Judge  Hoar's  letter  to  Mr.  Emerson  written  just  after 
Sumner's  death  comes  the  following:  — 

Washington,  March  11,  1874. 
My  dear  Mr.  Emerson:  — 

Sumner  is  dead,  as  the  telegraph  will  have  told  you  before  you 
receive  this.  He  died  at  thirteen  minutes  before  three  this  after- 
noon. I  held  his  hand  when  he  died;  and  was  the  only  one  of  his 
near  friends  who  was  in  the  room. 

His  last  words  (except  to  say  "Sit  down"  to  Mr.  Hooper,  who 
came  to  his  bedside,  but  had  gone  out  before  his  death)  were 
these:  "Judge,  tell  Emerson  how  much  I  love  and  revere  him." 


Charles  Sumner  305 

I  replied,  "He  said  of  you  once  that  he  never  knew  so  white  a 
soul " 

Mr.  Emerson,  being  asked  for  some  lines  that  would  be  ap- 
propriate to  be  read  or  printed  with  regard  to  Senator  Sumner, 
took  these  from  his  poem  in  memory  of  his  own  brother  Edward 
Bliss  Emerson:  — 

"AH  inborn  power  that  could  ' 

Consist  with  homage  to  the  good 
Flamed  from  his  martial  eye; 
Fronting  foes  of  God  and  man, 
Frowning  down  the  evil  doer, 
Battling  for  the  weak  and  poor. 
His  from  youth  the  leader's  look 
Gave  the  law  which  others  took, 
And  never  poor  beseeching  glance 
Shamed  that  sculptured  countenance.'* 

Emerson  himself  in  his  diary  wrote:  — 

"It  characterizes  a  man  for  me  that  he  hates  Charles  Sumner: 
for  it  shows  that  he  cannot  discriminate  between  a  foible  and  a 
vice.  Sumner's  moral  instinct  and  character  are  so  exceptionally 
pure  that  he  must  have  perpetual  magnetism  for  honest  men;  his 
ability  and  working  energy  such,  that  every  good  friend  of  the 
Republic  must  stand  by  him.  Those  who  come  near  him  and 
are  offended  by  his  egotism,  or  his  foible  (if  you  please)  of  using 
classic  quotations,  or  other  bad  taste,  easily  forgive  these  whims,  if 
themselves  are  good;  or  magnify  them  into  disgust,  if  they  them- 
selves are  incapable  of  his  virtue.  And  when  he  read,  one  night  in 
Concord,  a  lecture  on  Lafayette,  we  felt  that  of  all  Americans  he 
was  best  entitled  by  his  own  character  and  fortunes  to  read  that 
eulogy. 

"Every  Pericles  must  have  his  Creon;  Sumner  had  his  adver- 
saries, his  wasps  and  backbiters.  We  almost  wished  that  he  had 
not  stooped  to  answer  them.  But  he  condescended  to  give  them 
truth  and  patriotism,  without  asking  whether  they  could  appre- 
ciate the  instruction  or  not. 

"A  man  of  such  truth  that  he  can  be  truly  described;  he  needs 
no  exaggerated  praise." 


3o6  The  Saturday  Club 

Henry  James,  the  younger,  contributes  some  reminiscences 
which  should  find  a  place  here.  Speaking  of  the  Brooks  assault 
he  says:  — 

"The  impression  of  the  event,  which  was  like  a  welt  raised  by 
the  lash  itself  across  the  face  of  the  North,  is  one  that  memory  has 
keptj  for  this  careful  chronicler,  even  though  the  years  of  a  life  have 
overlaid  it,  I  recollect,  from  far  away,  .  .  .  the  reverberation  in 
parental  breasts,  in  talk,  passion,  prophecy,  in  the  very  aspect  of 
promptly-arriving  compatriots,  of  the  news  which  may  be  thought 
of  to-day,  through  the  perspective  of  history,  as  making  the  famous 
first  cannon-sound  at  Fort  Sumter  but  the  second  shot  of  the  War. 
To  very  young  minds  inflamed  by  the  comparatively  recent  pe- 
rusal of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  it  was  as  if  war  had  quite  grandly  be- 
gun, for  what  was  war  but  fighting,  and  what  but  fighting  had  for 
its  sign  great  men  lying  prone  in  their  blood.''  These  wonder- 
ments, moreover,  were  to  have  a  sequel  —  the  appearance  of  the 
great  man,  after  an  interval  in  Paris  and  under  the  parental  roof, 
with  the  violence  of  the  scene,  to  one's  vivid  sense,  still  about  him 
(though  with  wounds  by  that  time  rather  disappointingly  healed), 
and  with  greatness,  enough,  visible,  measurable,  unmistakable 
greatness,  to  fill  out  any  picture.  His  stature,  his  head,  his  face, 
his  tone  —  well  do  I  remember  how  they  fitted  one's  very  earliest 
apprehension,  perhaps,  of  'type,'  one's  young  conception  of  the 
statesman  and  the  patriot.  They  were  as  interesting  and  impres- 
sive as  if  they  had  been  a  costume  or  a  uniform." 

Longfellow  loved  him  as  a  brother,  and  in  1851  wrote  in  his 
diary:  "A  Sunday  without  a  Sumner  is  an  odd  thing —  Domen- 
ica  senza  domine — but  to-day  we  have  had  one";  and  when 
Sumner  was  beaten  by  Brooks  he  wrote  an  affectionate  and 
indignant  letter  at  once,  and  again  on  May  28,  —  "I  have  just 
been  reading  again  your  speech.  It  is  the  greatest  voice,  on  the 
greatest  subject,  that  has  been  uttered  since  we  became  a  nation. 
No  matter  for  insults  —  we  feel  them  with  you;  no  matter  for 
wounds  —  we  also  bleed  in  them!  You  have  torn  the  mask  off  the 
faces  of  traitors;  and  at  last  the  spirit  of  the  North  is  aroused."  ^ 

Charles  F.  Adams,  the  younger,  in  his  autobiography  says: 

*  See  Life  of  Henry  JVadsworth  Longfellow,  by  Samuel  LfOngfellow,  vol.  ii. 


Charles  Sumner  307 

"  In  those  days  we  saw  a  great  deal  of  Mr.  Sumner,  and  I  felt  for 
him  an  admiration  closely  verging  on  affection.  He  was  very 
kind  and  considerate  to  us  children,  taking  a  deep  interest  in  us, 
and  being  very  companionable.  He  was  at  that  time  thirty-seven, 
and  certainly  a  most  striking  and  attractive  personality.  The  world 
was  all  before  him,  he  was  kindly,  earnest,  enthusiastic  and  very 
genial.  A  constant  guest  at  my  father's  house,  he  exercised  a 
great  influence  over  me,  and  one  very  elevating.  To  him  as  he 
was  at  that  period  and  later  I  feel  under  deep  obligation." 

Speaking  of  his  course  at  Harvard  he  continues:  "No  instructor 
produced  or  endeavoured  to  produce  the  slightest  impression  on 
me;  no  spark  of  enthusiasm  was  sought  to  be  infused  into  me.  In 
that  line  I  owed  far  more  to  Charles  Sumner  than  to  all  of  the 
Harvard  professors  put  together." 

He  said  in  1 860-61  of  the  Senate:  "As  one  looked  down  from 
the  gallery,  the  only  man  I  remember  whose  face  and  bearing, 
whose  figure  and  the  air  of  large  refinement  about  him  seemed  to 
me  impressive  was  Mr.  Sumner.  He  certainly  always  offered  a 
notable  exception  to  the  prevailing  commonplace  and  coarseness 
of  fibre,  both  mental  and  physical." 

The  following  passage  from  Judge  Hoar's  tribute  after  his  death 
was  well  merited  and  was  absolutely  true:  "Wherever  the  news  of 
this  event  spreads  through  this  broad  land,  not  only  in  this  city 
among  his  associates  in  the  public  councils,  not  only  in  the  old 
Commonwealth  of  which  he  was  the  pride  and  the  ornament, 
but  in  many  quiet  homes,  in  many  a  cabin  of  the  poor  and  lowly 
there  is  to-day  inexpressible  tenderness  and  profound  sorrow." 

Nothing  can  more  fitly  conclude  this  notice  than  Whittier's 
ode 

TO  CHARLES  SUMNER 

If  I  have  seemed  more  prompt  to  censure  wrong 
Than  praise  the  right;  if  seldom  to  thine  ear 
My  voice  hath  mingled  with  the  exultant  cheer 

Borne  upon  all  our  Northern  winds  along; 

If  I  have  failed  to  join  the  fickle  throng 

In  wide-eyed  wonder,  that  thou  standest  strong 

In  victory,  surprised  in  thee  to  find 

Brougham's  scathing  power  with  Canning's  grace  combined: 


3o8  'The  Saturday  Club 


Thou  knowest  my  heart,  dear  friend,  and  well  canst  guess 
That,  even  though  silent,  I  have  not  the  less 
Rejoiced  to  see  thy  actual  life  agree 
With  the  large  future  which  I  shaped  for  thee. 
When,  years  ago,  beside  the  summer  sea, 
White  in  the  moon,  we  saw  the  long  waves  fall 
Baffled  and  broken  from  the  rocky  wall, 
That,  to  the  menace  of  the  brawling  flood, 
Opposed  alone  its  massive  quietude. 
Calm  as  a  fate;  with  not  a  leaf  nor  vine 
Nor  birch-spray  trembling  in  the  still  moonshine, 
Crowning  it  like  God's  peace.   I  sometimes  think 
That  night-scene  by  the  sea  prophetical 
(For  Nature  speaks  in  symbols  and  in  signs, 
And  through  her  pictures  human  fate  divines), 
That  rock,  wherefrom  we  saw  the  billows  sink 
In  murmuring  rout,  uprising  clear  and  tall     ■ 
In  the  white  light  of  heaven,  the  type  of  one 
Who,  momently  by  Error's  host  assailed, 
Stands  strong  as  Truth,  in  greaves  of  granite  mailed; 
And,  tranquil-fronted,  listening  over  all 
The  tumult,  hears  the  angels  say,  "Well  done!" 

M.S. 


Chapter  X 
1863 

We  sung  the  mass  of  lances  from  morn  till  eve. 

Welsh  Bard 

THE  dawn  of  the  New  Year  was  brightened  by  the  Eman- 
cipation. Longfellow  at  evening  wrote  in  his  journal:  "A 
beautiful  day,  full  of  sunshine,  ending  in  a  tranquil  moonlight. 
May  it  be  symbolical!" 

On  that  evening,  at  the  Boston  Music  Hall,  crowded  with  eager 
and  happy  people,  white  and  black,  a  Jubilee  Concert  was  held. 
Mr.  George  Willis  Cooke  tells  of  Mr.  Dwight's  zeal  and  success  in 
carrying  out  the  plan.  Noble  music  from  Beethoven,  Mendelssohn, 
Handel,  and  Rossini  was  included  in  the  programme  and  some 
of  the  best  singers  and  musicians  in  Boston  joined  their  gifts  to 
make  it  an  inspiring  occasion.  Emerson  had  written  the  poem 
which  he  was  asked  to  read  at  the  opening :  ^  — 

The  word  of  the  Lord  by  night 
To  the  watching  Pilgrims  came, 
As  they  sat  by  the  seaside, 
And  filled  their  hearts  with  flame. 

God  said,  I  am  tired  of  kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more; 
Up  to  my  ear  the  morning  brings 
The  outrage  of  the  poor. 


My  angel,  —  his  name  is  Freedom,  — 
Choose  him  to  be  your  king; 
He  shall  cut  pathways  east  and  west 
And  fend  you  with  his  wing. 

Lo!  I  uncover  the  land 
Which  I  hid  of  old  time  in  the  West, 
As  a  sculptor  uncovers  the  statue 
When  he  has  wrought  his  best. 

*  Afterwards  published  as  the  "Boston  Hymn." 


3IO  T^he  Saturday  Club 

t    I  show  Columbia  of  the  rocks 
Which  dip  their  foot  in  the  seas 
And  soar  to  the  air-borne  flocks 
Of  clouds  and  the  boreal  fleece. 

I  will  divide  my  goods; 
Call  in  the  wretch  and  the  slave: 
None  shall  rule  but  the  humble, 
And  none  but  Toil  shall  have. 


I  break  your  bonds  and  masterships, 
And  I  unchain  the  slave: 
Free  be  his  heart  and  hand  henceforth 
As  wind  and  wandering  wave. 

I  cause  from  every  creature 
His  proper  good  to  flow; 
So  much  as  he  is  and  doeth, 
So  much  he  shall  bestow. 

But,  laying  hands  on  another 
To  coin  his  labour  and  sweat, 
He  goes  in  pawn  to  his  victim 
For  eternal  years  in  debt. 

To-day  unbind  the  captive, 
So  only  are  ye  unbound; 
Lift  up  a  people  from  the  dust. 
Trump  of  their  rescue,  sound! 

Pay  ransom  to  the  owner, 

And  fill  the  bag  to  the  brim. 

Who  is  the  owner?  The  slave  is  owner. 

And  ever  was.   Pay  him. 


Up!  and  the  dusky  race 
That  sat  in  darkness  long,  — 
Be  swift  their  feet  as  antelopes. 
And  as  behemoth  strong. 

Come,  East  and  West  and  North, 
By  races,  as  snow-flakes, 
And  carry  my  purpose  forth. 
Which  neither  halts  nor  shakes. 


1863 


3" 


My  will  fulfilled  shall  be, 
For,  in  daylight  or  in  dark. 
My  thunderbolt  has  eyes  to  see 
His  way  home  to  the  mark. 

Also  Dr.  Holmes's  "Army  Hymn"  was  sung  by  solo  and  chorus. 

An  important  patriotic  movement  was  at  this  time  happily 
made.  Colonel  Charles  R.  Lowell  wrote,  early  in  the  spring,  to 
Major  Henry  L.  Higginson  from  camp  at  Readville,  where  he  was 
raising  the  Second  Massachusetts  Cavalry:  "I  think  public  opin- 
ion here  is  getting  stouter;  more  efforts  are  making  to  educate 
the  great  unthinking;  good  editorials  are  reprinted  and  circulated 
gratis.  A  club  is  now  forming  in  Boston,  a  Union  Club,  to  support 
the  Government,  irrespective  of  party,  started  by  Ward,  Forbes, 
Norton,  Amos  Lawrence,  &c.,  &c.  This  seems  to  me  a  very  prom- 
ising scheme.  Clubs  have,  in  all  trying  times,  been  great  levers 
for  moving  events  along."  In  Thomas  G.  Appleton's  notebook  I 
find:  "The  Union  Club,  organized  February  4,  1863,  first  occu- 
pied its  present  quarters,  the  former  residence  of  Abbott  Law- 
rence, October  15,  1863,  the  conditions  of  membership  being 
'unqualified  loyalty  to  the  Constitution  and  Union  of  the  United 
States,  and  unwavering  support  of  the  Federal  Government  in  its 
efforts  for  the  suppression  of  the  Rebellion.'"  Its  promoters  were 
Samuel  G.  Ward,  the  first  treasurer;  Charles  W.  Storey,  the  first 
secretary;  William  Gray,  Martin  Brimmer,  Charles  G.  Loring, 
Francis  Edward  Parker,  and  others,  and  its  object  was  "the 
encouragement  and  dissemination  of  patriotic  sentiment  and 
opinion." 

Hon.  Edward  Everett  was  the  first  president,  and  Norton  writes 
to  George  W.Curtis:  "Our  Union  Club  promises  well;  two  hun- 
dred members  already,  and  Mr.  Everett  and  his  followers  pledged 
to  principles  which  suit  you  and  me."  Forbes's  letter  to  a  patriotic 
correspondent  in  New  York  shows  the  need  that  was  felt  of  coun- 
teracting Boston's  indifferent  or  pro-slavery  club  influences.  He 
wrote:  "I  am  very  glad  to  find  that  the  doings  of  your  Delmonico 
Copperhead  Conclave  have  stirred  New  York  up  to  the  impor- 
tance of  spreading  light  in  the  dark  places.  .  .  .  The  fact  is,  'Club 
Men'  who  live  by  wine,  cards,  tobacco,  and  billiards  for  their 


312  'The  Saturday  Club 

cheap  stimulants  and  time-killers,  gravitate  very  strongly  towards 
Secesh  sympathies.  They  are  apt  to  think  themselves  aristocratic 
and  gentleman-like  and  they  look  up  to  the  idle  slave-owners  with 
respect,  as  being  more  permanently  idle  than  themselves;  at 
least  it  is  so  here.  Hence,  the  public  opinion  influenced  by  our 
clubs  is  generally  unsound  and  there  is  great  need  of  a  rallying- 
point  for  the  unconditional  loyalists.  I  hope  our  Club  will  help 
us  to  this  want."  And  the  Club  did  its  work  actively  and  well. 
It  seems  that  the  kind  of  men  above  alluded  to  pleased  themselves 
by  calling  it  "The  Sambo  Club." 

The  difficulty  of  getting  soldiers,  and  the  paying  of  enormous 
bounties  for  inferior  men,  led  to  an  active  interest  by  several  mem- 
bers, among  whom  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe  should  be  specially  men- 
tioned, in  recruiting  coloured  soldiers  in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee, 
where  in  the  following  months  several  regiments  of  these  were 
raised  by  the  energy  of  George  L.  Stearns,  already  mentioned, 
commissioned  a  Major  by  Governor  Andrew  for  this  purpose. 

The  spring  of  this  year  was  the  darkest  time  of  the  war.  The 
tide  of  the  Rebellion  seemed  to  be  rising;  the  frightful  sacrifice 
of  our  troops  at  Fredericksburg  was  recent,  and  the  great  failure 
of  Chancellorsvllle  was  just  coming  on.  Our  finances  were  em- 
barrassed. In  the  shipyards  of  Liverpool  ironclad  rams,  against 
which  our  ports  were  defenceless,  were  being  built,  unchecked,  for 
our  foe. 

This  unfriendly  act  Mr.  Forbes  was  anxiously  watching.  The 
rams,  he  knew,  could  break  the  blockade  —  then  England  and 
France  would  probably  interfere  to  close  the  war.  In  March,  he 
was  summoned  from  his  sick-bed  by  telegram  from  Secretary  Chase 
to  come  to  New  York.  Next  day  he  met  there  the  Secretaries  of 
the  Treasury  and  Navy.  They  asked  him  to  sail  for  England  on 
the  third  day  thereafter;  to  act  there,  in  company  with  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Aspinwall,  for  the  best  interests  of  the  United  States;  espe- 
cially, first,  to  stop  the  ironclads;  second,  to  place  ten  million 
dollars  of  the  new  five-twenty  bonds.  The  Commissioners  were 
asked  to  write  their  own  instructions.  Mr.  Forbes  wrote  them,  and 
the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  signed  them.  Mr.  Forbes  sailed 
promptly;  Mr.  Aspinwall  followed  with  the  bonds  a  week  later. 


i863 


313 


Our  Minister,  Mr.  Adams,  and  our  Consuls  were  doing  all  they 
could,  but  had  limited  means,  and  the  former,  because  of  his  deli- 
cate and  highly  important  position,  had  to  proceed  with  the  utmost 
care.  He  was  strong  and  courageous,  but  had  to  be  cool  and  tact- 
ful. ^ 

The  episode  is  most  interesting,  but  too  long  to  be  told  in  de- 
tail.^ Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  Commissioners  failed  to  sell  the 
bonds  abroad  at  that  unpromising  time,  but  that  Mr.  Forbes  ob- 
tained a  very  large  loan  on  the  security  of  a  portion  of  the  bonds 
from  his  friends,  the  Barings;^  that  he  kept  close  watch  on  the 
vessels  being  built  for  the  South,  and  acquired,  through  our  effi- 
cient Consuls,  information  that  proved  important  in  case  the  mat- 
ter should  come  into  the  courts.  The  Commissioners  even  tried 
to  buy  the  vessels,  but  in  vain.  Mr.  Forbes  Was  in  constant  cor- 
respondence with  the  Secretaries  at  Washington  and  Governor 
Andrew.  He  bought  cannon  for  Massachusetts'  defence.  He  did 
everything  possible  to  enlighten  the  opinion  of  the  English  gov- 
erning and  influential  classes;  first,  on  the  real  character  of  the 
struggle;  second,  on  their  short-sightedness  in  creating  a  precedent 
sure  to  be  dangerous  to  England  in  the  end. 

The  Commissioners,  having  done  everything  practicable,  re- 
turned in  July.  Mr.  Adams  steadfastly  and  wisely  met  conditions 
as  they  arose. 

Mr.  Adams  wrote  the  following  noteworthy  letter  to  Mr. 
Forbes  in  September:  — 

.  .  .  We  are  now  all  in  a  fever  about  Mr.  Laird's  ironclads,  one 
of  which  is  on  the  point  of  departure,  and  the  other  launched 
and  getting  ready,  with  double  gangs  of  workmen  at  it  night  and 
day.  The  question  now  is.  Will  Government  interfere,?  and  it 
must  be  settled  in  a  day  or  two  at  farthest.    I  have  done  all  in 

*  Mr.  Adams  stayed  abroad  eight  years.  After  his  return  he  was  chosen  a  member  of 
the  Club,  in  1870. 

2  Mr.  Forbes,  in  his  later  years,  wrote  for  his  children  and  grandchildren  a  record  of  the 
interesting  passages  of  his  life.  After  his  death,  these  were  edited  and  published  by  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  William  Hastings  Hughes,  under  the  title  Letters  and  Recollections  of  John 
Murray  Forbes.    His  account  of  this  English  visit  is  there  given. 

'  To  Mr.  Forbes's  integrity  and  financial  knowledge  was,  of  course,  added  that  of  our 
member,  Mr.  Samuel  Gray  Ward,  the  Barings'  representative  in  America. 


3^4  The  Saturday  Club 

my  power  to  inspire  them  with  a  just  sense  of  the  responsibility 
they  may  incur  from  permitting  so  gross  a  breach  of  neutrality. 
If,  however,  they  fail  to  act,  you  may  perhaps  soon  see  one  of 
the  vessels,  with  your  glass,  from  Milton  Hill,  steaming  up  to 
Boston.  .  .  .  She  will  stand  a  cannonade,  unless  the  harbour  be 
obstructed.  It  will  be  for  Governor  Andrew  to  be  on  the  watch 
the  moment  the  news  of  her  departure  reaches  America.  ...  Of 
course,  if  all  this  takes  place,  I  shall  be  prepared  to  make  my  bow 
to  our  friends  in  London  as  soon  as  the  papers  can  be  made 
out.  .  .  . 

P.S.  9  September.  Since  writing  this,  the  Government  has  de- 
cided to  stop  the  vessels. 

Yours  truly,  C.  F.  A. 

Mr.  Adams  did  not  give  the  reason  of  the  action  mentioned  in 
the  postscript. 

On  the  5th  of  September  he  had  written  to  Lord  Russell:  "At 
this  moment,  when  one  of  the  ironclad  vessels  is  on  the  point  of 
departure  from  this  kingdom  on  its  hostile  errand  against  the 
United  States,  it  would  be  superfluous  for  me  to  point  out  to  your 
lordship  that  this  is  war.^* 

The  answer  (September  8)  was,  "Instructions  have  been  issued 
which  will  prevent  the  departure  of  these  two  ironclad  vessels 
from  Liverpool."  ^ 

George  S.  Hillard,  a  Boston  man  of  letters,  Adams's  contempo- 
rary, wrote:  "Mr.  Adams  had  to  maintain  the  rights  of  his  coun- 
try with  unbending  firmness,  and  at  the  same  time  to  keep  his 
spirit  under  perfect  rule,  as  any  explosion  of  ill-temper  or  any 
expression  of  irritation,  would  have  been  turned  to  the  disadvan- 
tage alike  of  himself  and  his  country." 

To  return  to  our  side  of  the  ocean.  July  brought  the  high  tide  of 
Confederate  advance  in  Lee's  invasion  of  Pennsylvania,  and  then, 
with  the  victory  of  Gettysburg  and  the  surrender  of  Port  Hudson, 
its  slow  but  continuous  ebb  began. 

The  good  work  in  Massachusetts,  with  widest  results,  of  the 

^  It  should  be  said  that,  before  the  arrival  of  Messrs.  Forbes  and  Aspinwall,  Mr.  Adams 
had  secured  the  detention  of  the  gunboat  Alexandra. 


i863 


315 


Sanitary  Commission  and  Loyal  Publication  Society,  in  which  our 
members  took  part,  went  on.  Most  important  aid  and  further- 
ance was  given  by  some  of  them  in  that  period  of  difficulty  in 
raising  troops.  Governor  Andrew's  able  and  loyal  friends  did  all 
they  could  to  lighten  his  manifold  heavy  burdens. 

Hawthorne,  at  this  time,  evidently  was  ailing,  though  neither 
he  nor  his  friends  realized  how  serious  the  trouble  would  prove. 
Emerson  writes  in  a  book  in  which  he  entered  notes  on  his  friends 
from  time  to  time:  "I  prescribed  for  Hawthorne  a  copious  use  of 
the  Mill  Dam.^  He  should  buy  a  cow,  and  instantly  he  would 
need  to  call  upon  Sam  Staples,  and  Coombs,  and  Gowing,  and 
Edmund  Hosmer,  and  John  Moore,  and  the  whole  senate  of  the 
Mill  Dam,  once  and  again,  and  very  often,  for  advice,  until  he 
grew  acquainted  with  folks.  J.  W.  Browne's  account  of  Senator 
Wilson  to  me  was,  'He  liked  folks.'  Hawthorne,  I  fear,  does  not." 

Very  possibly  at  this  time  Hawthorne's  fatal  disease  was  begin- 
ning. His  political  views,  no  doubt,  were  biassed  by  his  friendship 
for  and  correspondence  with  Franklin  Pierce,  the  ex-President. 
I  borrow  from  Dr.  James  K.  Hosmer's  Last  Leaf  the  following 
passage,  beginning  with  Hawthorne's  mournful  words:  — 

"'At  present  we  have  no  Country.  .  .  .  New  England  is  really 
quite  as  large  a  lump  of  earth  as  my  heart  can  take  in.  I  have  no 
kindred  with  or  leaning  toward  the  Abolitionists.'  But  his  cool- 
ness to  his  Country's  welfare  was  of  a  piece  with  the  general  cool- 
ness toward  well  and  ill  in  the  affairs  of  the  world.  Humanity 
rolls  before  him  as  it  did  before  Shakspeare,  sometimes  weak, 
sometimes  heroic,  depressed,  exultant,  suffering,  happy.  He  did 
not  concern  himself  to  regulate  its  movement,  to  heighten  its 
joy,  or  mitigate  its  sorrow.  His  work  was  to  portray  it  as  it  moved, 
and  in  that  conception  of  his  mission  he  established  his  master- 

*  The  beginning  of  Concord's  main  street,  where  the  Mill  Brook  flows  under  it;  the 
centre  where,  since  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  shops  have  gradually  succeeded 
the  original  ancient  mill.  It  is  our  Rialto,  where,  in  the  groceries,  the  "  Squire's  "  office,  or  on 
the  sidewalk,  every  one  meets.  The  worthies  named  were  respectively:  (i)  the  benevolent 
constable  and  jailer;  (2)  a  queer  character  who  grafted  trees,  handled  bees,  and  believed 
in  all  rustic  superstitions;  (3  and  4)  old-fashioned  sturdy  farmers,  the  latter  often  men- 
tioned by  Emerson  in  his  journals;  (5)  the  deputy-sheriff,  also  a  remarkable  modern 
farmer. 


3^6  'The  Saturday  Club 

fulness  as  an  artist,  though  it  abates  somewhat,  does  it  not?  from 
his  wholeness  as  a  man." 

To  turn  to  others  of  our  literary  men.  Lowell  now  published 
his  collected  and  increasingly  bellicose  utterances  in  the  second 
series  of  "Biglow  Papers."  Of  Norton,  at  this  period,  Mr.  M.  A. 
DeWolfe  Howe  rightly  says,  "He  was  a  man  whose  physical 
health  necessarily  restricted  his  service  to  that  of  mind  and  spirit. 
This  service  he  rendered  in  full  measure."  He  had  written  in 
the  Atlantic  wholesome  and  timely  articles,  and  in  this  year  he, 
with  Lowell  as  fellow-editor,  took  charge  of  the  North  American 
Review.  He  steadily  emphasized  the  condition  that  Holmes  had 
already  expressed, — 

"We  grudge  them  not,  —  our  dearest,  bravest,  best, — 
Let  but  the  quarrel's  issue  stand  confest; 
'T  is  Earth's  old  slave-god  battling  for  his  crown, 
And  Freedom  fighting  with  her  visor  down." 

Lowell's  fearful  presentation  of  the  great  issue,  In  "The 
Washers  of  the  Shroud,"  has  been  quoted  in  the  story  of  the  year 
before. 

Whittier,  Quaker  as  he  was,  cared  so  much  for  the  great  cause 
of  Freedom,  that  the  manifestly  inherent  militant  element  in 
him,  shown  in  some  earlier  poems,  and,  this  autumn,  in  his  "In 
War-Time,"  in  some  measure  reconciled  him  to  the  violence  and 
the  sacrifice  of  young  life  in  the  battle  ordeal.  Also  he  had, 
for  the  first  time,  seen  the  humble  race  just  emancipated  in  the 
surroundings  of  the  Captivity,  at  Port  Royal,  and  amid  their 
rejoicings  felt  the  sad  uncertainty  of  their  future.  After  giving 
the  glad  song  of  the  negro  boatmen,  he  goes  on :  — 

"So  sang  our  dusky  gondoliers; 
And  with  a  secret  pain, 
And  smiles  that  seem  akin  to  tears 
We  hear  the  wild  refrain. 

"  We  dare  not  share  the  negro's  trust. 
Nor  yet  his  hope  deny; 
We  only  know  that  God  is  just, 
And  every  wrong  shall  die. 


i863 


317 


"Rude  seems  the  song;  each  swarthy  face, 
Flame-lighted,  ruder  still: 
We  start  to  think  that  hapless  race 
Must  shape  our  good  or  ill; 

"Sing  on,  poor  hearts!  Your  chant  shall  be 
Our  sign  of  blight  or  bloom,  — 
The  Vala-song  of  Liberty, 
Or  death-rune  of  our  doom!" 

But  a  fortnight  after  the  victory  at  Gettysburg,  a  tragic  reverse, 
although  with  a  glorious  history,  occurred.  The  Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts  Infantry,  for  permission  to  raise  which  and  In  its 
recruiting  and  proper  officering  so  much  patient  and  earnest  work 
had  been  done,  largely  by  our  members,  already  had  won  for  Itself 
respect  and  good  repute.  An  assault  on  Battery  Wagner,  a  well- 
prepared  and  garrisoned  sand  fort  In  Charleston  Harbour,  by  a 
brigade  under  General  Strong,  had  been  decided  on,  and  the 
Fifty-fourth,  just  arrived  after  a  long  and  weary  march,  were 
given  the  place  of  honour  in  the  first  line.  At  twilight  the  rush 
was  made.  As  they  tolled  up  the  steep  and  difficult  sand-slope 
they  were  met  at  short  range  by  a  staggering  fire,  but  the  young 
colonel,  Robert  Shaw,  leaped  to  the  front,  crying,  "Forward, 
Fifty-fourth!"  The  men  followed  and  he  fell,  shot  dead,  into  the 
fort.  The  regiment  showed  admirable  courage  and  tenacity,  but 
the  task  was  too  hopeless,  especially  as  they  were  also  suffering 
from  the  shells  of  our  own  Navy  in  the  gathering  darkness. 

Colonel  Shaw  had  accepted  the  command  at  the  outset  in  the 
face  of  largely  hostile  public  opinion,  leaving  for  it  his  place  in 
the  admirable  and  aristocratic  Second  Massachusetts.  Of  this 
choice,  his  brother-in-law,  Colonel  Charles  Russell  Lowell,  wrote: 
"It  is  important  that  this  regiment  be  started  soberly,  and  not 
spoiled  by  too  much  fanaticism.  Shaw  Is  not  a  fanatic."  And  after 
his  death  he  wrote:  "Everything  that  comes  about  Rob  shows  his 
death  to  have  been  more  and  more  completely  that  which  every 
soldier  and  every  man  would  long  to  die,  but  it  is  given  to  very 
few,  for  very  few  do  their  duty  as  Rob  did.  I  am  thankful  they 
buried  him  *with  his  niggers';  they  were  brave  men  and  they  were 
his  men." 


3^8  T^he  Saturday  Club 

Lowell  paid  his  tribute  to  Colonel  Shaw's  memory,  from  which 
these  verses  are  selected:  — 

MEMORI^  POSITUM 

Right  in  the  van, 
On  the  red  rampart's  slippery  swell. 
With  heart  that  beat  a  charge,  he  fell 

Foeward,  as  fits  a  man; 
But  the  high  soul  burns  on  to  light  men's  feet 
Where  death  for  noble  ends  makes  dying  sweet; 

His  life  her  crescent's  span 
Orbs  full  with  share  in  their  undarkening  days 
Who  ever  climbed  the  battailous  steeps  of  praise 

Since  valour's  praise  began. 


I  write  of  one, 
While  with  dim  eyes  I  think  of  three; 
Who  weeps  not  others  fair  and  brave  as  he? 

Ah,  when  the  fight  is  won. 
Dear  Land,  whom  triflers  now  make  bold  to  scorn 
(Thee!  from  whose  forehead  Earth  awaits  her  morn), 

How  nobler  shall  the  sun 
Flame  in  thy  sky,  how  braver  breathe  thy  air. 
That  thou  bred'st  children  who  for  thee  could  dare 

And  die  as  thine  have  done! 

The  question  has  been  asked  now,  what  Emerson's  feelings 
would  have  been  with  regard  to  the  war  now  going  on.  One  has 
but  to  refer  to  his  tribute  to  Colonel  Shaw,  his  officers  and  brave 
coloured  soldiers  in  the  "Voluntaries:"  — 

"...  Best  befriended  of  the  God 
He  who,  in  evil  times. 
Warned  by  an  inward  voice. 
Heeds  not  the  darkness  and  the  dread. 
Biding  by  his  rule  and  choice. 
Feeling  only  the  fiery  thread 
Leading  over  heroic  ground 
Walled  with  mortal  terror  round. 


Peril  around,  all  else  appalling. 
Cannon  in  front  and  leaden  rain,  — 
Him  Duty  through  the  clarion  calling 
To  the  van  called  not  in  vain. 


i863 


319 


Stainless  soldier  on  the  walls, 
Knowing  this,  —  and  knows  no  more,  — 
Whoever  fights,  whoever  falls, 
Justice  conquers  evermore, 
Justice  after  as  before,  — 
And  he  who  battles  on  her  side, 
God,  though  he  were  ten  times  slain, 
Crowns  him  victor  glorified 
Victor  over  death  and  pain 
Forever:  but  his  erring  foe, 
Self-assured  that  he  prevails. 
Looks  from  his  victim  lying  low, 
And  sees  aloft  the  red  right  arm 
Redress  the  eternal  scales.  ^ 

And,  earlier  in  the  poem,  the  lines,  — 

So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 
So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must. 
The  youth  replies,  /  can. 

In  April  of  this  year,  Longfellow  records  the  completion  of  a 
task,  which  he  had  resumed  after  years  of  intermission,  as  an 
anodyne  for  the  pain  of  his  bereavement:  "Finish  the  transla- 
tion of  the  Inferno.  So  the  whole  work  is  done;  the  Purgatorio 
and  Paradiso  having  been  finished  before.  I  have  written  a  canto 
a  day,  thirty-four  days  in  succession,  with  many  anxieties  and 
interruptions." 

Agassiz  is  reported  by  Emerson,  returning  from  the  Club,  in 
his  journal,  as  declaring  "that  he  is  going  to  demand  of  the  com- 
munity that  provision  should  be  made  for  the  study  of  Natural 
Science  on  the  same  scale  as  that  for  the  support  of  Religion." 
Elsewhere  he  notes,  "Agassiz  says  he  means  to  make  the  Harvard 
Museum  such  that  no  European  naturalist  can  afford  to  stay 
away  from  it." 

Early  in  this  year  General  McClellan  visited  Boston.  His  pop- 
ularity had  waned  since  he  had  been  deprived  of  his  command  and 
ordered  to  report  at  Trenton,  his  home;  but  he  was  cordially  re- 
ceived in  Boston,  especially  by  the  families  of  soldiers  in  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac.    It  does  not  appear  that  he  was  invited  to  the 

*  These  last  five  lines  were  omitted  by  Mr.  Emerson  in  later  editions. 


3  2  o  'The  Saturday  Club 

Saturday  Club's  dinner,  but  Norton,  in  a  letter  written  February 
I,  says:  "McClellan  is  still  here,  and  is  causing  people  to  break 
the  Sabbath  to-day.  Agassiz  is  a  devoted  admirer  of  his,  and  said 
yesterday,  that  'he  was  a  great  but  not  a  towering  man.'  Dr. 
Holmes,  studying  him  physiologically,  talks  of  'broad  base  of 
brain,'  'threshing-floor  of  ideas,'  no  invention  or  original  force  of 
intellect,  but  compact,  strong,  executive  nature,  'with  a  neck  such 
as  not  one  man  in  ten  thousand  possesses,'  'muscular  as  a  prize- 
fighter,' etc.,  etc." 

In  letters  written  to  George  William  Curtis  in  September  of  this 
year  by  Norton,  I  find  mention  of  four  of  our  members,  though 
only  one  was  so  at  that  time.  First,  of  Olmsted,  whose  departure 
for  California  Norton  deplores.  He  had  apparently  just  finished 
his  duty  as  a  member  of  a  commission  to  look  into  the  sanitary 
conditions  of  the  United  States  forces.  Then  Norton  continues :  — 

"A  ring  at  the  bell  —  and  I  hear  William  James's  pleasant  and 
manly  voice  in  the  other  room,  from  which  the  sound  of  my 
Mother's  voice  has  been  coming  to  me  as  she  reads  aloud  the  con- 
sular experiences  of  the  most  original  of  consuls.  To-night  I  am 
half  annoyed,  half  amused  at  Hawthorne.^  He  is  nearly  as  bad  as 
Carlyle. 

"27  September.  Charles  Eliot  is  going  abroad,  .  .  .  and  pro- 
poses to  spend  the  next  six  or  eight  months  in  Paris.  He  means  to 
study  chemistry,  and  is  also  desirous  to  become  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  the  system  and  management  and  organization  of 
some  of  the  public  institutions  of  France.  He  has  a  genius  for  such 
matters,  and  is  well  fitted  by  his  training  here  to  discover  in  the 
foreign  institutions  the  points  of  the  most  practical  importance 
as  capable  of  adaptation  to  our  needs."  ^ 

Longfellow's  oldest  son,  Charles  Appleton  Longfellow,  had 
been  commissioned  a  Second  Lieutenant  in  the  First  Massa- 
chusetts Cavalry  in  March.  Longfellow  notes  in  his  diary: "Nov. 
28th.  The  Army  of  the  Potomac  is  advancing.  December  1st.  At 
dinner  received  a  telegram  from  Washington  stating  that  Charles 

^  Hawthorne's  loyalty  and  constant  friendship  for  his  classmate,  ex-President  Franklin 
Pierce,  persisted  to  the  end,  ignoring  his  pro-slavery  advocacy,  and  his  wrongs  to  the 
Free-State  settlers  in  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

*  This  was  six  years  before  Eliot's  presidency. 


i863 


321 


had  been  severely  wounded.  Left  for  Washington  at  five  o'clock." 
The  cavalry  had  been  engaged  in  a  minor  action  at  New  Hope 
Church.  Young  Longfellow  and  Captain  Henry  P.  Bowditch 
(later,  distinguished  Professor  of  Physiology,  and  one  of  our  mem- 
bers) were  brought  up  with  other  wounded  officers  to  Washington 
to  their  waiting,  anxious  parents  on  the  fourth  day,  young  Long- 
fellow with  a  severe  wound  through  both  shoulders,  Bowditch 
less  severely  through  the  arm. 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  from  Dr.  Henry  Marion 
Howe,  of  Columbia  University,  son  of  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley  Howe, 
gives  us  a  pleasant  reminiscence  of  a  meeting  of  about  this  time. 
Professor  Howe  evidently  was  not  aware  that  the  Club,  though 
in  its  Silver  Age,  still  ts  alive :  — 

"My  sister,  Mrs.  Hall,  tells  me  that  you  have  asked  her  for 
reminiscences  of  my  father  in  connection  with  the  Saturday  Club 
in  Boston.  She  tells  me  that  she  has  no  definite  recollections,  and 
it  may  be  that  I  am  the  only  living  person  who  ever  attended  a 
meeting  of  that  Club. 

"When  I  was  a  boy  about  fifteen  years  old,  say  in  1863  more  or 
less,  my  father  took  me  to  one  of  the  dinners  of  the  Club,  and  I 
remember  with  great  vividness  Mr.  Thomas  Appleton  presiding 
and  expatiating  on  the  merits  of  the  Kentucky  mutton  which  he 
was  carving.  I  remember  also  Dr.  Holmes  likening  the  efi"ect 
of  the  various  phases  of  Christianity  brought  before  young  people 
to  the  effect  of  hypothetical  magnets.  He  said  in  efi^ect  that, 
suppose  in  addition  to  a  magnet  which  attracts  iron  we  had  also 
magnets  which,  instead  of  attracting  iron,  attracted  some  of 
them  copper,  some  of  them  lead,  etc.;  if,  now,  chips  of  iron,  cop- 
per, and  lead  were  all  mixed  up  together,  and  we  passed  these 
several  magnets  over  them  successively,  each  metal  would  re- 
spond to  its  own  magnet  irrespective  of  its  environment. 

"My  recollection  is  that  at  this  point  my  father  bade  me  retire, 
as  I  was  only  brought  in  to  see  the  august  assembly  before  it 
really  began  its  dinner." 

This  year  the  good  and  brilliant  Henry  James,  Senior,  the  phi- 
losopher, was  the  only  member  chosen  into  the  Club. 


HENRY  JAMES 

The  Celtic  qualities  which  appeared  at  their  best  in  Henry  James, 
who  transmitted  them  to  his  sons,  came  to  him  from  his  father, 
who  came  from  Northern  Erin  in  his  youth  to  seek  his  fortune. 
He  found  it  in  Albany,  where  he  became  a  prosperous  merchant. 
His  family  were  well  provided  for,  therefore  could  follow  their 
instincts  in  choosing  their  course  in  life.  But  also  a  warm  heart, 
hospitality,  ready  wit,  an  ever-present  sense  of  humour,  and  a 
picturesque  eloquence  rejoicing  in  combat,  were  the  Jameses'  rich 
inheritance.  « 

Early  in  life  Henry's  childish  mind  began  its  instinctive  fight 
against  the  Calvinism  of  the  day,  passively  accepted  by  his  par- 
ents, as  he  tells  amusingly  in  an  autobiographical  fragment,  thus: — 

^'We  children  of  the  church  had  been  traditionally  taught  to 
contemplate  God  as  a  strictly  supernatural  being,  bigger  personally 
than  all  the  world;  and  not  only,  therefore,  out  of  all  sympathy  with 
our  pigmy  infirmities,  but  exceedingly  jealous  of  the  hypocritical 
homage  we  paid  to  his  contemptuous  forbearance.  This  dramatic 
homage,  however,  being  of  an  altogether  negative  complexion,  was 
exceedingly  trying  to  us.  .  .  ."  And  about  "keeping  Sunday": 
"How  my  particular  heels  ached  for  exercise,  and  all  my  senses 
pined  to  be  free,  it  is  not  worth  while  to  recount;  suffice  it  to  say, 
that  although  I  know  my  parents  were  not  so  Sabbatarian  as  many, 
I  cannot  flatter  myself  that  our  household  sanctity  ever  presented 
a  pleasant  aspect  to  the  angels.  Nothing  is  so  hard  for  a  child  as 
not-to-do,  that  is,  to  keep  his  hands  and  feet  and  tongue  in  enforced 
inactivity.  It  is  a  cruel  wrong  to  put  such  an  obligation  upon  him, 
while  his  reflective  faculties  are  still  undeveloped,  and  his  senses 
urge  him  to  unrestricted  action.  .  .  . 

"My  boyish  animal  spirits  .  .  .  allowed  me,  no  doubt,  very  little 
time  for  reflection;  yet  it  was  very  seldom  that  I  lay  down  at 
night  without  a  present  thought  of  God,  and  some  little  effort  of 
recoil  upon  myself  .  .  .  but  the  dark,  silent  night  usually  let  in 
the  spectral  eye  of  God,  and  set  me  to  wondering  and  pondering 


Henry  jfames  323 

evermore  how  I  should  effectually  baffle  its  gaze.  Now  I  cannot 
conceive  any  less  wholesome  or  innocent  occupation  for  the  child- 
ish mind  than  to  keep  a  debtor  and  creditor  account  with  God;  for 
the  effect  of  such  discipline  is  either  to  make  the  child  insufferably 
conceited,  or  else  to  harden  him  in  indifference  to  the  Divine 
name.  I  was  habitually  led  by  my  teachers  to  conceive  that  at 
best  a  chronic  apathy  existed  on  God's  part  towards  me,  super- 
induced, by  Christ's  work,  upon  the  active  enmity  he  had  formerly 
felt  towards  us;  and  the  only  reason  why  this  teaching  did  not 
leave  my  mind  in  a  similarly  apathetic  condition  towards  him  was, 
as  I  have  since  become  persuaded,  that  it  always  met  in  my  soul, 
and  was  practically  paralyzed  by  a  profounder  Divine  instinct 
which  affirmed  his  stainless  and  ineffable  love." 

In  his  youth  a  sobering  influence  came  upon  Mr.  James,  an 
infection  causing  long  invalidism  and  finally  the  loss  of  one  leg. 
Probably  by  his  own  choice  he  went  to  the  Theological  Seminary 
at  Princeton.  There  he  found  comfort  in  Stephen  Dewhurst,  of 
Maryland,  a  man  as  spiritually  minded  and  original  as  himself. 
Of  him  he  says :  — 

"However  justly  sensitive  his  intellect  was  to  every  considera- 
tion growing  out  of  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil  in  men's 
actual  conduct,  he  was  yet  practically  insensible  to  the  preten- 
sion of  a  distinctively  moral  righteousness  in  them  as  the  ground 
of  their  religious  hope.  The  disproportion  between  finite  and 
infinite  seemed  in  fact  so  overwhelming  to  his  imagination,  as 
to  make  it  impossible  to  him  to  deem  any  man  in  himself  vitally 
nearer  to  God  than  any  other  man. 

"I  have  often  reflected  with  astonishment  since,  that  one  so 
young  should  have  been  so  thoroughly  vastated  in  the  providence 
of  God  of  our  ordinarily  rank  and  florid  pride  of  moralism. 

"What  distinguished  him  from  us  all  was  his  social  quality  — 
the  frank,  cordial  recognition  he  always  evinced  of  that  vital 
fellowship  or  equality  between  man  universal  and  man  individual 
which  is  the  spiritual  fulfilment  or  glorification  of  conscience,  and 
ends  by  compelling  angel  and  devil  into  its  equal  subservience." 

The  above  extracts  will  shed  light  on  James's  position  in  the 
philosophic  tournament  chronicled  later  in  this  story. 


324  The  Saturday  Club 

Religion  was  a  matter  of  daily  thought  with  him,  but  he  exe- 
crated easy  formalism  as  he  did  smug  morality.  Mr.  Emerson 
writes:  "In  New  York,  Henry  James  quoted  Thackeray's  speeches 
in  society.  'He  liked  to  go  to  Westminster  Abbey  to  say  his 
prayers,'  etc.  '  It  gave  him  the  comfortablest  feeling.'  At  the  same 
time,  he  is  immoral  in  his  practice,  but  with  limits.  .  .  .  He  thought 
Thackeray  could  not  see  beyond  his  eyes,  and  has  no  ideas,  and 
merely  is  a  sounding-board  against  which  his  experiences  thump 
and  resound.   He  is  the  merest  boy." 

After  Mr.  James's  marriage  he  moved  to  New  York.  Beautiful 
lights  are  shed  on  the  home  life  there  by  the  younger  Henry  in 
his  very  last  and  most  human  books.  The  father  heard  Emerson 
lecture  there  and  brought  him  into  his  house  once  and  again. 
The  thoughts  had  stirred  him.  He  looked  forward  to  probing  each 
of  them  in  a  discussion  next  morning  in  his  study  in  which,  man  to 
man,  Emerson  should  with  logic  defend  his  intuitions,  but  was  dis- 
appointed. Again  and  again,  through  the  years  of  their  friendship, 
he  tried  to  compass  this.  The  answer  was  still  the  same  which, 
years  before,  Emerson  wrote  to  his  honoured  friend  Henry  Ware: 
"  I  could  not  possibly  give  you  one  of  the  '  arguments '  you  cruelly 
hint  at,  on  which  any  doctrine  of  mine  stands.  For  I  do  not  know 
what  arguments  mean  in  reference  to  any  expression  of  a  thought." 

Always  disappointed  of  his  purpose  to  make  the  "inexplicable" 
Emerson  give  logical  reasons  for  his  intuitions  and  meet  squarely 
the  "concretely  vital  questions"  which  occupied  him,  James  cries 
out:  "Oh  you  man  without  a  handle!  Shall  one  never  be  able 
to  help  himself  out  of  you  according  to  his  needs,  and  be  depend- 
ent only  upon  your  fitful  tippings-up  .^ "  But,  despite  this  avoid- 
ance of  the  much-desired  single  combat,  the  two  always  remained 
friends,  and  Emerson  particularly  desired  James  as  a  member  of 
the  Club,  years  before  it  took  form,  but,  until  1864,  he  lived  too 
far  away. 

Speaking  of  the  excess  of  virility  of  the  men  whom  he  met  on 
his  Western  lecturing  excursions,  Emerson  says:  "They  oppress 
me  and  would  soon  become  intolerable  if  it  were  not  for  a  few 
friends,  who,  like  women,  tempered  the  acrid  mass.  Henry  James 
was  true  comfort — wise,  gentle,  polished,  with  heroic  manners,  and 


Henry  yames  325 


a  serenity  like  the  sun.  *  I  do  not  wish  this  or  that  thing  my  fortune 
will  procure,  I  wish  the  great  fortune,'  said  Henry  James,  and  said 
it  in  the  noble  sense." 

Again  Emerson  wrote  of  him  (November,  1851):  "His  lectures 
are  really  brilliant,  and  I  was  told  that  he  swallowed  up  all  the 
doctrinaires  and  neologists  in  New  York,  and  is  left  sole  aesthetic 
Doctor,  Doctor  Duhitantium^  in  that  city.  He  is  the  best  man  and 
companion  in  the  world." 

Elsewhere  his  friend  calls  him  "that  sub-soil  plougher,  Henry 
James." 

Mr.  James  was  an  eager  Swedenborgian.  His  books  were  all 
on  religious  subjects.  Edwin  L.  Godkin,  speaking  of  his  strong 
picturesque  writing,  adds:  "I  suppose  there  was  not  in  his  day  a 
more  formidable  master  of  English  style.  .  .  .  One  of  his  most 
amusing  experiences  was  that  the  other  Swedenborgians  repudi- 
ated all  religious  connection  with  him,  so  that  the  sect  to  which 
he  belonged,  and  of  which  he  was  the  head,  may  be  said  to  have 
consisted  of  himself  alone.*'  Mr.  Howells,  speaking  of  one  of 
William  James's  books,  said,  "He  is  brilliant,  but  not  clear;  like 
his  father,  who  wrote  The  Secret  of  Swedenborg,  and  kept  it."  His 
son  Henry  thus  summarizes  his  view  of  his  father's  faith:  "The 
optimists  of  the  world,  the  constructive  idealists,  as  one  has 
mainly  known  them,  have  too  often  struck  one  as  overlooking 
more  of  the  aspects  of  the  real  than  they  recognize;  whereas  our 
indefeasible  impression,  William's  and  mine,  of  our  parent  was  that 
he,  by  his  very  constitution  and  intimate  heritage,  recognized 
many  more  of  those  than  he  overlooked.  What  was  the  finest 
part  of  our  intercourse  with  him  —  that  is,  the  most  nutritive 
—  but  a  positive  record  of  that.?" 

Henry  thus  affectionately  describes  his  father's  happy  and  con- 
stitutional faith:  "That  optimism  fed  so  little  by  any  sense  of 
things  as  they  were  or  are,  but  rich  in  its  vision  of  the  facility 
with  which  they  might  become  almost  at  any  moment,  or  from  one 
day  to  the  other,  totally  and  splendidly  diff"erent.  A  less  vague  or 
vain  idealist  could  n't,  I  think,  have  been  encountered;  it  was  given 
him  to  catch  in  the  fact  at  almost  any  turn  right  or  left  some  fla- 
grant assurance  or  promise  of  the  state  of  man  transfigured.  .  .  . 


326  "The  Saturday  Club 

The  case  was  really  of  his  rather  feeling  so  vast  a  rightness  close  at 
hand,  or  lurking  immediately  behind  actual  arrangements,  that  a 
single  turn  of  the  inward  wheel,  one  real  response  to  pressure  of 
the  spiritual  spring,  would  bridge  the  chasms,  straighten  the  dis- 
tortions, rectify  the  relations  and,  in  a  word,  redeem  and  vivify 
the  whole  mass  —  after  a  far  sounder,  yet,  one  seemed  to  see,  also 
far  subtler,  fashion  than  any  that  our  spasmodic  annals  had  yet 
shown  us.  It  was,  of  course,  the  old  story  that  we  had  only  to  he 
with  more  intelligence  and  faith  —  an  immense  deal  more,  cer- 
tainly—  in  order  to  work  off,  in  the  happiest  manner,  the  many- 
sided  ugliness  of  life;  which  was  a  process  that  might  go  on, 
blessedly,  in  the  quietest  of  all  quiet  ways."  A  phrase  in  the  last 
sentence  is  important.  Mr.  James's  deepest  desire  was  what 
his  sons  and  daughter  should  he;  their  works  would  follow  from 
what  they  were.  His  love  for  them  amounted  to  a  pang.  After 
his  superlative  fashion  of  speech,  he  said  to  Emerson  once,  he 
wished  sometimes  that  the  lightning  would  strike  his  wife  and 
children  out  of  existence  and  he  should  suffer  no  more  from 
loving  them.  He  had  to  send  his  boys  to  schools.  He  felt  that 
Europe  was  perhaps  the  best  milieu  for  their  study  and  culture 
in  their  adolescent  period.  But  the  family  went  abroad  together, 
and  he  and  their  mother  remained  near  by.  The  atmosphere  of 
that  home  was  charming,  affectionate,  stimulating,  like  that  of  a 
high  mountain  near  the  tropics,  and  this  atmosphere  did  not 
evaporate  during  their  short  separations,  not  far  asunder,  while  in 
Europe,  the  boys  being  at  Swiss  schools. 

After  an  absence  of  five  years,  Henry  the  younger,  who  was 
being  infected  by  the  charm  of  the  Old  World  which  held  him  for 
the  rest  of  his  days,  found,  to  his  dismay,  that  they  were  to  return 
to  America.  "The  particular  ground  for  our  defection,  which  I 
obscurely  pronounced  mistaken,  was  that  since  William  was  to 
embrace  the  artistic  career  .  .  .  our  return  to  America  would 
place  him  in  prompt  and  happy  relation  to  William  Hunt,  then 
the  most  distinguished  of  our  painters  as  well  as  one  of  the  most 
original  and  delightful  of  men,  and  who  had  cordially  assured  us 
that  he  would  welcome  such  a  pupil.  ...  I  am  of  course  not  sure 
how  often  our  dear  father  may  not  explicatively  have  mentioned 


Henry  jfames  327 

the  shy  fact  that  he  himself  in  any  case  had  gradually  ceased  to 
'like'  Europe.  This  affects  me  at  present  as  in  the  highest  degree 
natural;  it  was  to  be  his  fortune  for  the  rest  of  his  life  to  find  him- 
self, as  a  worker,  in  his  own  field  and  as  to  what  he  held  most  dear, 
scantly  enough  heeded,  reported,  or  assimilated  even  in  his  own 
air,  no  brisk  conductor  at  any  time  of  his  remarkable  voice;  but 
in  Europe  his  isolation  had  been  utter.  .  .  .  No  more  admirable 
case  of  apostolic  energy  combined  with  philosophic  patience,  of 
constancy  of  conviction  and  solitary  singleness  of  production  un- 
perturbed, can  I  well  conceive." 

On  Mr.  James's  return  from  Europe  with  his  family,  he  settled 
in  Newport  and  placed  his  two  younger  boys.  Garth  Wilkinson 
and  Robertson,  in  the  excellent  school  then  kept  by  Mr.  F.  B. 
Sanborn  in  Concord.  The  spring  vacations  in  the  years  i860  and 
1 86 1  I  was  invited  to  spend  with  them  in  Newport.  I  was  affec- 
tionately received  and  thus  had  the  privilege  of  sharing  the  inti- 
mate life  of  this  remarkable  family. 

Admirable  people  were  then  in  the  quiet  Newport  when  such 
folly  and  fashion  as  then  were  had  flitted  back  to  the  city:  Charles 
L.  Brooks,  the  clergyman  and  German  scholar,  Edmund  Tweedy, 
almost  a  brother  to  Mr.  James,  George  Calvert,  William  Morris 
Hunt,  then  domiciled  there,  the  Perrys,  and  others. 

The  family  life  of  the  Jameses  was  most  interesting,  brilliant, 
original,  and  affectionate.  Mr.  James  was  of  medium  height, 
limped  along  on  his  wooden  leg  with  some  activity,  but  his  mind 
and  wit  were  most  active  and  his  temperament  sympathetic. 
His  face  reminded  one  at  once  of  the  representations  of  Soc- 
rates with  the  bald  head,  short  nose,  eyes  humorous  yet  kindly 
(but  spectacled),  and  beard  of  moderate  dimensions;  and,  like 
Socrates,  he  delighted  in  starting  a  theme  to  argue  with  his 
companion  to  its  conclusion  —  seemingly  surprising.  For  he  was 
not  only  a  humourist,  but  master  of  the  superlative,  and,  after 
a  little  almost  stuttering  hesitation,  he,  like  his  sons  after 
him,  would  bring  out  an  adjective  or  adverb  or  appellation  that 
would  startle  the  literal-minded,  but  he,  with  no  malice,  chose 
to  attach  other  than  the  usual  significations  to  the  word,  and 
this   might  lead  to  illuminating  discussion.   Notable  examples 


328  "The  Saturday  Club 

of  this  entertaining  habit  (edifying,  if  understood)  occur  also  in 
his  writings. 

Meal-times  in  that  pleasant  home  were  exciting.  "The  adipose 
and  affectionate  Wilkie,"  ^  as  his  father  called  him,  would  say 
something  and  be  instantly  corrected  or  disputed  by  the  little 
cock-sparrow  Bob,^  the  youngest,  but  good-naturedly  defend  his 
statement,  and  then,  Henry  (Junior)  would  emerge  from  his 
silence  in  defence  of  Wilkie.  Then  Bob  would  be  more  imper- 
tinently Insistent,  and  Mr.  James  would  advance  as  Moderator, 
and  William,  the  eldest,  join  in.  The  voice  of  the  Moderator 
presently  would  be  drowned  by  the  combatants  and  he  soon  came 
down  vigorously  into  the  arena,  and  when.  In  the  excited  argu- 
ment, the  dinner  knives  might  not  be  absent  from  eagerly  ges- 
ticulating hands,  dear  Mrs.  James,  more  conventional,  but  bright 
as  well  as  motherly,  would  look  at  me,  laughingly  reassuring,  say- 
ing, "Don't  be  disturbed,  Edward;  they  won't  stab  each  other. 
This  is  usual  when  the  boys  come  home."  And  the  quiet  little 
sister  ate  her  dinner,  smiling,  close  to  the  combatants.  Mr.  James 
considered  this  debate,  within  bounds,  excellent  for  the  boys.  In 
their  speech,  singularly  mature  and  picturesque,  as  well  as  vehe- 
ment, the  Gaelic  (Irish)  element  in  their  descent  always  showed. 
Even  if  they  blundered,  they  saved  themselves  by  wit. 

Doughty  champion  as  Mr.  James  was,  I  once  saw  him  over- 
thrown in  a  tilt.  Mr.  Emerson  had  invited  many  thoughtful 
people  in  Concord,  and  some  from  the  city,  including  Mr.  James 
and  Mr.  Sam  G.  Ward,  to  a  "Conversation,"  at  his  house,  for 
Mr.  Alcott's  benefit.  He  wished  that  this  philosopher's  pure  and 
lofty  ideality,  which  in  private  so  often  refreshed  and  stimulated 
his  own  thought,  should  reach  open  ears  and  stir  good  minds. 
It  happened  that  Miss  Mary  Moody  Emerson  was  also  present, 
the  extraordinary  woman,  Emerson's  aunt,  the  inspiring  "sibyl" 
of  his  youth,  yet,  as  brought  up  In  Calvinism,  the  formidable  critic 
of  a  nephew  of  whom  she  was  proud.  The  apostolic  Alcott,  silver- 

1  Garth  Wilkinson  James,  a  very  charming  youth.  In  1862  he  enlisted  in  the  Forty- 
fourth  Massachusetts  Regiment.  Later,  he  became  the  Adjutant  in  the  Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts  Regiment,  and  was  very  severely  wounded  on  the  slopes  of  Fort  Wagner. 
After  the  war  he  settled  in  the  West  and  died  early. 

^  Robertson  James.  He  was  Lieutenant  in  the  Fifty-fifth  Massachusetts  Regiment,  later, 
Captain,  and,  after  the  war,  showed  himself  possessed  of  many  literary  and  artistic  gifts. 


Henry  yames  329 

haired  and  of  benignant  face,  as  ever,  assuming  assent — "We 
find,  —  do  we  not?"  etc.  —  began  his  quiet  talk.  He  had  not 
gone  far  when  Mr.  James,  who  supposed  that  the  "Conversa- 
tion" to  which  he  was  bidden  was  to  be  really  such,  threw  a  critical 
question  in  Mr.  Alcott's  path.  The  philosopher  quietly  glided 
round  the  obstacle,  but  Mr.  James  would  not  be  ignored,  and 
with  pleasant  pertinacity  insisted  on  having  his  objection  met. 
Mr.  Alcott  looked  a  little  annoyed  and  tried  to  brush  the  interrup- 
tion aside  (as  he  did  mosquitoes,  which  he  never  struck).  He 
was  no  swordsman;  had  no  slightest  skill  in  argument,  while  Mr. 
James,  like  Socrates,  delighted  in  dialectics,  and,  moreover,  sup- 
posed himself  fully  within  his  rights  when  asked  to  a  "Conver- 
sation." Soon  Mr.  Alcott  was  piteously  routed,  and  now  Mr. 
James,  sole  occupant  of  the  field,  talked  on  the  ethical  theme,  but 
obscuring  his  thought  to  the  common  hearer  by  his  brilliant  but 
whimsical  use  of  words.  He  with  vigorous  wit  attacked  "Morality" 
as  pernicious.  But  the  victory  was  not  yet  won.  Suddenly  Miss 
Mary  Emerson,  eighty-four  years  old,  dressed  underneath,  with- 
out doubt,  in  her  shroud,  which  in  later  years  she  always  wore, 
covered  without  by  some  black  semblances  of  the  attire  of  old 
ladies,  her  head  closely  capped,  reared  her  five  feet  one  inch  of 
height,  crossed  the  room,  and,  as  the  prophet  Samuel  slew  with 
the  sword  Agag,  King  of  the  Amalekites  whom  Saul  had  spared, 
so  she,  trembling  with  zeal,  and  shaking  this  daring  sinner  by  the 
shoulders,  as  she  spoke,  rebuked  his  speech.  Mr.  James  beamed 
with  delight  and  spoke  with  most  chivalrous  courtesy  to  this 
Deborah  bending  over  him.  The  fact  was  that  by  "Morality" 
he  meant  self-conscious  ethics,  dangerously  near  hypocrisy 
—  acting  for  observation's  and  example's  sake.  He  went  away 
with  little  opinion  of  Alcott,  but  the  highest  of  this  aged  antago- 
nist. The  curious  fact  was  that  she,  prizing,  with  Calvin,  "burn- 
ing faith  above  works,"  was  really,  had  they  talked  the  matter 
out,  in  more  sympathy  with  Mr.  James  than  anyone  in  the  room. 
In  England  Mr.  James  made  many  calls  on  Carlyle  before  he 
was  broken  with  age  and  grief.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  these 
meetings,  for  the  valiant  American  was  by  no  means  the  man  to 
avoid  or  go  down  before  the  dour  Borderer's  spear  —  would  have 


330  "The  Saturday  Club  ' 

enjoyed  the  encounter  and  gone  through  it,  secure  in  his  kindly 

humour,  yet  sorry  for  the  pessimist.   He  was  soon  disillusioned  as    .  ^ 

to  any  advancing,  working,  spiritual  quality  in  this  Jeremiah.  1 

"I  think  he  felt  a  helpless  dread  and  distrust  of  you  instantly 
that  he  found  you  had  any  positive  hope  in  God  or  practical  love 
to  man.  .  .  .  Pity  is  the  highest  style  of  intercourse  he  allowed 
himself  with  his  kind.  He  compassionated  all  his  friends  in  the 
measure  of  his  affection  for  them.  'Poor  John  Sterling,'  he  used 
always  to  say;  'poor  John  Mill,'  'poor  Frederic  Maurice,'  'poor 
Arthur  Helps,'  'poor  little  Browning,'  'poor  little  Lewes,'  and  so 
on;  as  if  the  temple  of  his  friendship  were  a  hospital,  and  all  its 
inmates  scrofulous  or  paralytic." 

Mr.  James  finds  in  him  the  dour  Covenanting  tradition  in  a 
new  form :  — 

"Carlyle,  inheriting  and  cherishing  for  its  picturesque  capabili- 
ties this  rude  Covenanting  conception,  which  makes  God  a  being 
of  the  most  aggravated  moral  dimensions,  of  a  wholly  super- 
human egotism,  or  sensibility  to  his  own  consequence,  of  course 
found  Mahomet,  William  the  Conqueror,  John  Knox,  Frederic  the 
Second  of  Prussia,  Goethe,  men  after  God's  own  heart,  and  coolly 
told  you  that  no  man  in  history  was  ever  unsuccessful  who  de- 
served to  be  otherwise. 

"Nothing  maddened  him  so  much  as  to  be  mistaken  for  a  re- 
former, really  intent  upon  the  interests  of  God's  righteousness 
upon  the  earth,  which  are  the  interests  of  universal  justice.  This 
is  what  made  him  hate  Americans,  and  call  us  a  nation  of  bores 
—  that  we  took  him  at  his  word,  and  reckoned  upon  him  as  a 
sincere  well-wisher  to  his  species. 

"He  was  mother  Eve's  own  darling  cantankerous  Thomas,  in 
short,  the  child  of  her  dreariest,  most  melancholy  old  age;  and 
he  used  to  bury  his  worn,  dejected  face  in  her  penurious  lap,  in 
a  way  so  determined  as  forever  to  shut  out  all  sight  of  God's  new 
and  better  creation." 

Mr.  James  was  the  only  man  chosen  into  the  Club  in  1863, 
when  he  was  on  the  point  of  moving  to  Cambridge.  The  following 
record  of  his  first  appearance  is  from  Longfellow's  journal:  — 


Henry  yames  3  3  ^ 

"January  26th,  1861.  Club  dinner.  Emerson  and  Hawthorne 
came  from  Concord.  And  (as  guests)  we  had  Channing  —  'our 
Concord  poet,'  as  Emerson  calls  him  —  and  Henry  James,  the 
philosopher." 

Mr-.  James,  in  a  letter  to  Emerson  soon  after,  chronicles  the 
occasion  in  brilliant  superlative.  I  suppress  two  names  of  honoured 
members,  friends  of  Mr.  James,  too,  who  chanced  to  bore  him  on 
that  day,  distracting  him  from  delighted  observation  of  Haw- 
thorne. 

"I  cannot  forbear  to  say  a  word  I  want  to  say  about  Haw- 
thorne and  Ellery  Channing.  Hawthorne  is  n't  a  handsome  man, 
nor  an  engaging  one  personally.  He  has  the  look  all  the  time,  to 
one  who  does  n't  know  him,  of  a  rogue  who  suddenly  finds  him- 
self in  a  company  of  detectives.  But  in  spite  of  his  rusticity,  I 
felt  a  sympathy  for  him  amounting  to  anguish,  and  could  n't  take 
my  eyes  off  him  all  the  dinner,  nor  my  rapt  attention,  as  that 
indecisive  little  X  found,  I  am  afraid,  to  his  cost,  for  I  hardly 
heard  a  word  of  what  he  kept  on  saying  to  me,  and  felt  at  one 
time  very  much  like  sending  down  to  Parker  to  have  him  removed 
from  the  room  as  maliciously  putting  his  little  artificial  person 
between  me  and  a  profitable  object  of  study.  Yet  I  feel  now  no 
ill-will  to  X,  and  could  recommend  any  one  (but  myself)  to  go  and 
hear  him  preach.  Hawthorne,  however,  seemed  to  me  to  possess 
human  substance,  and  not  to  have  dissipated  it  all  away,  as  that 
debauched  Y.  And  the  good,  inofi^ensive,  comforting  Longfellow, 
he  seemed  much  nearer  the  human  being  than  any  one  at  that  end 
of  the  table  —  much  nearer.  John  Forbes  and  yourself  kept  up  the 
balance  at  the  other  end;  but  that  end  was  a  desert,  with  him  for 
its  only  oasis.  It  was  so  pathetic  to  see  him,  contented,  sprawling. 
Concord  owl  that  he  was  and  always  has  been,  brought  blindfold 
into  the  brilliant  daylight,  and  expected  to  wink  and  be  lively  like 
any  little  dapper  Tommy  Titmouse  or  Jenny  Wren.  How  he  buried 
his  eyes  in  his  plate,  and  ate  with  a  voracity  that  no  person  should 
dare  to  ask  him  a  question.  My  heart  broke  for  him  as  that 
attenuated  Y  kept  putting  forth  his  long  antennae  toward  him, 
stroking  his  face,  and  trying  whether  his  eyes  were  shut. 

"The  idea  I  got  was,  and  it  was  very  powerfully  impressed  on 


332  'The  Saturday  Club 

me,  that  we  are  all  monstrously  corrupt,  hopelessly  bereft  of 
human  consciousness,  and  that  it  Is  the  Intention  of  the  Divine 
Providence  to  overrun  us  and  obliterate  us  In  a  new  Gothic 
and  Vandalic  invasion,  of  which  this  Concord  specimen  Is  a  first 
fruit.  It  was  heavenly  to  see  him  persist  In  Ignoring  Y,  and 
shutting  his  eyes  against  his  spectral  smiles;  eating  his  dinner  and 
doing  absolutely  nothing  but  that,  and  then  going  home  to  his 
Concord  den  to  fall  on  his  knees  and  ask  his  Heavenly  Father  why 
it  was  that  an  owl  could  n't  remain  an  owl,  and  not  be  forced  Into 
the  diversions  of  a  canary.  I  have  no  doubt  that  all  the  tenderest 
angels  saw  to  his  case  that  night,  and  poured  oil  Into  his  wounds 
more  soothing  than  gentlemen  ever  knew. 

"Ellery  Channing,  too,  seemed  so  human  and  good  —  sweet 
as  sunshine,  and  fragrant  as  pine  woods.  He  is  more  sophisticated 
than  the  others,  of  course,  but  still  he  was  kin;  and  I  felt  the  world 
richer  by  two  men  who  had  not  yet  lost  themselves  in  mere 
members  of  society.  This  Is  what  I  suspect  —  that  we  are  fast 
getting  so  fearful  one  to  another,  we  members  of  society,  that  we 
shall  ere  long  begin  to  kill  one  another  in  self-defence,  and  give 
place  in  that  way  to  a  more  veracious  state  of  things.  The  old 
world  is  breaking  up  on  all  hands  —  the  glimpse  of  the  everlast- 
ing granite  I  caught  In  Hawthorne  shows  me  that  there  Is  stock 
enough  for  fifty  better.  Let  the  old  Impostor  (i.e.,  society)  go,  bag 
and  baggage,  for  a  very  real  and  substantial  one  is  aching  to  come 
in,  in  which  the  churl  shall  not  be  exalted  to  a  place  of  dignity,  in 
which  innocence  shall  never  be  tarnished  or  trafficked  In,  in  which 
every  man's  freedom  shall  be  respected  down  to  Its  feeblest  fila- 
ment as  the  radiant  altar  of  God.  To  the  angels,  says  Swedenborg, 
Death  means  Resurrection  to  Life;  by  that  necessary  rule  of  in- 
version which  keeps  them  separate  from  us  and  us  from  them,  and 
so  prevents  our  being  mutual  nuisances."  ^ 

As  the  Club  has  gone  on,  and  the  proportion  of  its  poets,  even 
those  "of  one  poem,"  has  grown  less  and  less,  it  was  pleasant  to 
find  this  one  attributed  to  the  elder  James :  — 

^  In  this  letter,  as  in  the  one  about  his  friend  Carlyle,  full  allowance  must  be  made  for 
Mr.  James's  love  for  extravaganza,  trusting  to  the  reader's  wit  for  due  abatement. 


Henry  yames  33  3 


MIDSUMMER 

Now  it  is  June,  and  the  secret  is  told ; 
Flashed  from  the  buttercups'  glory  of  gold; 
Hummed  in  the  bumblebee's  gladness,  and  sung 
New  from  each  bough  where  a  bird's  nest  is  swung; 
Breathed  from  the  clover  beds,  when  the  winds  pass; 
Chirped  in  small  psalms,  through  the  aisles  of  the  grass. 


Chapter  XI 
1864 

Through  the  street 

I  hear  the  drummers  making  riot. 
And  I  sit  thinking  of  the  feet 

That  followed  once,  and  now  are  quiet. 

Have  I  not  held  them  on  my  knee? 

Did  I  not  love  to  see  them  growing. 
Three  likely  lads  as  well  could  be. 

Handsome  and  brave,  and  not  too  knowing? 

I  sit  and  look  into  the  blaze 

Whose  nature,  just  like  theirs,  keeps  climbing 

Long  as  it  lives  in  shining  ways. 

And  half  despise  myself  for  rhyming. 

What 's  talk  to  them,  whose  faith  and  truth 
On  War's  red  touchstone  rang  true  metal. 

Who  ventured  life  and  love  and  youth 
For  the  great  prize  of  death  in  battle?  ^ 

Lowell 

LOWELL  had  been  asked  to  take  up,  and  transfuse  blood  rich 
enough  for  the  great  period,  into  the  ageing  quarterly,  the 
North  American  Review.  He  was  so  stirred,  and  charged  with 
feeling,  that  he  was  moved  to  accept  the  task  at  the  beginning 
of  the  year,  but  only  on  condition  that  his  friend  Norton  should 
assume  the  more  active  duties  of  editor.  But  Lowell  wrote  a 
political  article  in  almost  every  number,  certainly  during  that 
most  important  year  of  the  Presidential  election. 

It  is  remarkable  that,  while  several  of  our  wisest  members, 
though  voting  for  Lincoln  as  the  best  man  who  could  be  elected, 
were  yet  uneasy  at  again  choosing,  in  that  dangerous  period,  "a 
pilot  who  waited  to  ask  his  crew's  opinion,"  —  Lowell,  hitherto 
so  radical,  maintained   that  the  President's  conduct  was  right, 

^  Mr.  Emerson  was  troubled  at  the  rustic  Hosea  Biglow  version  in  which  Lowell  chose  to 
clothe  his  lament  for  his  nephews,  and  when  including  the  verses  in  his  Parnassus  asked 
Lowell  to  change  them  to  English  more  seemly  for  the  subject.  This  the  poet  did,  but 
under  protest. 


i864 


335 


and,  comparing  him  to  the  pilot  of  a  shaky  raft,  said,  "The  Coun- 
try is  to  be  congratulated  that  he  did  not  think  it  his  duty  to 
run  straight  at  all  hazards,  but  cautiously  to  assure  himself  with 
his  setting-pole  where  the  main  current  was  and  keep  steadily  to 
that."  He  was  rejoiced  when  Lincoln  won  the  nomination,  and 
championed  him  effectively  in  the  quarterly  through  the  year. 
Norton  too  worked  with  zeal  to  show  the  issue  as  being  the  pres- 
ervation of  true  democracy. 

At  about  Thanksgiving  time  in  the  previous  year,  Longfellow's 
Sudbury  Tales  —  its  title  at  the  last  minute  changed  to  Tales  of 
a  Wayside  Inn  —  had  been  published.  Copies,  sent  by  him  to 
friends,  brought  back  to  him  grateful  letters.  Hawthorne's  low 
spirits,  due  to  unrecognized  advancing  disease,  were  cheered  by 
his  friend's  remembrance,  and  he  wrote:  — 

Concord,  January  2,  1864. 

Dear  Longfellow:  It  seems  idle  to  tell  you  that  I  have  read 
the  Wayside  Inn  with  great  comfort  and  delight.  I  take  vast  satis- 
faction in  your  poetry,  and  take  very  little  in  most  other  men's, 
except  It  be  the  grand  old  strains  that  have  been  sounding  on 
through  all  my  life.  .  .  . 

It  gratifies  my  mind  to  find  my  own  name  shining  in  your 
verse  —  even  as  If  I  had  been  gazing  up  at  the  moon  and  detected 
my  own  features  in  Its  profile. 

I  have  been  much  out  of  sorts  of  late,  and  do  not  well  know  what 
is  the  matter  with  me;  but  am  inclined  to  draw  the  conclusion  that 
I  shall  have  little  more  to  do  with  pen  and  ink.  One  more  book 
I  should  like  well  enough  to  write,  and  have  indeed  begun  it,  but 
with  no  assurance  of  ever  bringing  It  to  an  end.  As  is  always  the 
case,  I  have  a  notion  that  the  last  book  would  be  my  best,  and 
full  of  wisdom  about  matters  of  life  and  death  —  and  yet  It  will 
be  no  deadly  disappointment  If  I  am  compelled  to  drop  It.  You 
can  tell,  far  better  than  I,  whether  there  is  anything  worth  having 
in  literary  reputation;  and  whether  the  best  achievements  seem 
to  have  any  substance  after  they  grow  cold. 

Your  friend, 

Nathl.  Hawthorne. 


33^  T^be  Saturday  Club 


Another  letter  might  find  place  here  because  of  its  allusions :  — 

Concord,  February  24,  1862. 

My  dear  Longfellow:  What  a  rusty  place  is  the  country  to 
live  in,  where  a  man  loses  his  manners.  ...  I  have  never  thanked 
you  for  the  New  Year's  poems,  —  chiefly,  the  "Birds"  [of  Kill- 
ingworth],  which  is  serene,  happy,  and  immortal  as  Chaucer,  and 
speaks  to  all  conditions.  .  .  .  Was  it  you  who  sent  me,  a  week 
earlier,  ...  a  Brussels  publishers'  list  announcing  the  French 
translation  of  Representative  Men  as  defendee  in  France.?  —  of  which 
too  much  honour  I  am  curious  to  know  the  cause. 

Have  you  read  Elliot  Cabot's  paper  on  "Art".?  How  danger- 
ously subtile!  One  would  say  it  must  be  the  epitaph  of  existing 
art,  if  the  artists  once  read  and  understand  him.  And  yet,  of 
course,  he  will  say  —  only  to  begin  a  new  creation.  But  I  am  very 
proud  of  Boston  when  it  turns  out  such  a  Greek  as  Cabot. 

When  will  you  come  back  to  the  Saturdays,  which  want  their 
ancient  lustre?  ...  I  have  often  in  these  solitudes  questions  to 
ask  you;  but  at  such  meetings  they  have  no  answers. 

R.  W.  Emerson. 

From  Emerson's  journal:  — 

"February  28,  1864.  Yesterday  at  the  Club  with  Cabot, 
Ward,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Judge  Hoar,  Appleton,  Howe,  Woodman, 
Forbes,  Whipple,  with  General  Barlow,^  and  Mr.  Howe,  of  Nova 
Scotia,  for  guests,*  but  cramped  for  time  by  late  dinner  and  early 
hour  of  the  return  train  —  a  cramp  which  spoils  a  club.  For  you 
shall  not,  if  you  wish  good  fortune,  even  take  pains  to  secure  your 
right  and  left  hand  men.  The  least  design  instantly  makes  an 
obligation  to  make  their  time  agreeable,  which  I  can  never  as- 
sume. Holmes  was  gay  with  his  'preadamlte  mentioned  in  the 
Scriptures  —  Chap  First';  and  Appleton  with  'that  invariable 
love  of  hypocrisy  which  delights  the  Saxon  race,'  etc." 

The  following  were  evidently  brought  home  from  the  Club :  — 

"Scotus   Erigena,  sitting  at   the  table  of  Charles  the    Bald, 

1  Francis  C.  Barlow,  whose  brilliant  military  talent  and  utter  courage  raised  hirn  from 
a  private  volunteer  soldier  to  a  Major-General's  command,  lived  in  Concord  with  his 
mother  in  his  boyhood  and  attended  the  Academy. 


i864 


337 


when  the  King  asked  him  how  far  a  Scot  was  removed  from  a  sot^ 
answered  with  Irish  wit,  'By  a  table's  breadth.' 

"The  old  sharper  said  'his  conscience  was  as  good  as  ever  it 
was;  he  had  never  used  it  any.'" 

This  entry  is  also  from  Emerson's  journal:  — 

"March  26,  1864.  At  the  Club,  where  was  Agassiz  just  re- 
turned from  his  lecturing  tour,  having  created  a  Natural  History 
Society  in  Chicago,  where  four  thousand,  five  hundred  dollars 
were  subscribed  as  its  foundation  by  nineteen  persons.^  And  to 
which  he  recommended  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Kinnicott  as  the 
superintendent. 

"Dr.  Holmes  had  received  a  demand  from  Geneva,  New  York, 
for  fifty-one  dollars  as  cost  of  preparing  for  his  failed  lecture. 
Governor  Andrew  was  the  only  guest.^  Hedge,  Hoar,  both  the 
Howes,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Norton,  Woodman,  Whipple,  were  pres- 
ent. It  was  agreed  that  the  April  election  should  be  put  off  till 
May,  and  that  the  next  meeting  should  be  on  April  23d  instead 
of  30th,  and  that  we  should,  on  that  day,  have  an  open  Club, 
allowing  gentlemen  whom  we  should  designate  to  join  us  in  hon- 
our of  Shakspeare's  birthday.  The  committee  of  the  Club  might 
invite  certain  gentlemen  also  as  the  guests  of  the  Club;  Emerson, 
Lowell,  and  Holmes  being  the  Committee." 

April  came,  and  on  its  23rd  day  brought  around  the  supposed 
Three  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  Shakspeare's  birth. ^  I  find  no 
record  of  the  celebration  planned  by  the  Club,  excepting  in  let- 
ters, Holmes's  poem,  Emerson's  journal,  and  Cabot's  Memoir 
of  Emerson. 

The  following  letter  from  Emerson,  who  would  seem  to  have 
been  on  the  committee,  is  preserved :  — 

Concord,  18  April,  Monday. 
My  dear  Mr.  Forbes  :  I  am  in  pain  to  hear  from  you  in  the 
matter  of  our  Shakspeare  festival  of  the  Saturday  Club  on  the 

^  Footnote  by  R.  W.  E.  When  I  visited  the  "Chicago  Natural  History  Museum"  in 
1865,  the  fund  had  become  $50,000. 

2  He  was  chosen  a  member  shortly  after. 

'  The  Stratford  parish  records  show  that  Shakspeare  was  christened  April  26,  1564, 
and,  as  it  was  common  then  to  perform  this  rite  on  the  third  day  of  a  child's  life,  and  also 
because  of  a  tradition  that  he  died  [1616J  on  the  anniversary  of  his  birthday,  April  23  is 
accepted. 


33^  T^he  Saturday  Club 

23d  instant.  We  cannot  do  without  your  presence  and  aid  on  that 
day.  I  fear  that  in  your  journeyings  and  patriotic  and  private 
toils  my  note  has  never  reached  you.  One  part  on  which  we  re- 
lied on  you  was,  for  the  urging  Whittier  to  come.  I  sent  him 
the  formal  invitation  of  the  Club,  and  told  him  that  he  would 
very  likely  hear  again  from  you;  as  I  remembered  that  you  had 
expressed  the  confidence  that  you  would  one  day  bring  him. 
Bryant  and  Richard  Grant  White  are  coming,  and  R.  H.  Dana, 
Sr.,  and  Everett  and  Governor  Andrew;  and  Longfellow  is  com- 
ing back,  and  it  is  very  desirable  that  this  true  poet,  and  hid  like 
a  nightingale,  should  be  there.  But  I  have  heard  that  his  sister 
is  ill,  and  he  is  not  likely  to  come.  He  has  not  sent  any  reply  as 
yet,  and  I  fancy  that  its  falling  on  Saturday  and  his  terror  of  be- 
ing in  Boston  on  the  Sunday  may  be  in  the  way.  But  if  you,  who 
are  a  ruler  of  men,  will  promise  to  protect  him,  and  say  how  ex- 
ceptional the  occasion  is,  I  yet  hope  you  will  bring  him  with  you. 

Ever  yours 

R.  W.  Emerson. 

P.S.  ...  It  is  now  fixed  at  four  o'clock,  p.m.,  at  the  Revere 
House. 

No  mention  of  the  occasion  appears  in  Longfellow's  journal, 
as  edited  by  his  brother. 

Emerson  soon  after  writes  to  Ward:  — 

Concord,  Wednesday,  6  April,  1864. 
My  dear  Friend  :  — 

At  our  meeting  yesterday  to  mature  the  plan  for  the  23d  — 
the  project  of  inviting  gentlemen  to  pay  their  scot  was  pronounced 
impracticable;  and  it  was  settled  that  the  Committee  must  fix 
on  the  names  of  the  guests,  and  invite  them  in  the  name  of  the 
Club;  and  that  each  member  of  the  Club  should,  if  he  would,  have 
the  privilege  of  paying  for  one  of  these  guests.  Of  course  we 
must  not  have  more  guests  than  we  could  pay  for  and  we  counted 
thirteen  members,  perhaps  fourteen,  on  whom  to  rely.  But  of 
course,  also  we  must  not  give  them  the  privilege  of  choosing  their 
guests  unless  they  please  to  choose  the  guests  of  the  Club.  These 
we  agreed  on,  as  follows :  — 


i864 


339 


Governor  Andrew 
W.  C.  Bryant 
George  Bancroft 
G.  C.  Verplanck 
Richard  Grant  White 
Edward  Everett 
George  Ticknor 


Dr.  Asa  Gray 
John  G.  Whittier 
John  Neal 
Edwin  Booth 
Professor  Child 
George  W.  Curtis 
James  T.  Fields 


R.  H.  Dana,  Sr. 

There  are  already  fifteen  names,  without  counting  one  or  two 
more  which  had  their  patrons.  In  this  State  of  Venice,  we  can 
only  allow  you  an  option  at  first  within  this  list.  But  five  or  six 
of  these  will  not  come,  and  then,  if  we  do  not  give  you  per- 
emptorily others  (and  Norton  has  suggested  Wendell  Phillips 
to  be  added  —  but  he,  I  suppose,  will  not  come),  we  shall,  at  once, 
accept  your  nominee.  It  seems  we  cannot  easily  have  a  larger 
table  than  thirty-eight.  .  .  . 

R.  W.  Emerson. 

S.  G.  Ward. 

Many  of  the  invited  guests  were  unable  to  be  present.  Mrs. 
James  T.  Fields  kindly  furnished  me  with  this  list  of  guests  and 
order  of  seats  at  this  celebration:  — 


Governor  Andrew 
Dr.  Frothingham 
Dr.  S.  G.  Howe 
John  Weiss 
Dr.  Hedge 
M.  Brimmer 
J.  F.  Clark 
Judge  Hoar 
J.  R.  Lowell 
J.  T.  Fields 
C.  E.  Norton 
G.  I.  Davis 
O.  W.  Holmes 
R.  C.  Winthrop 


Agassiz 

R.  H.  Dana 
Richard  Grant  White 
Professor  Child 
J.  S,  D wight 
J.  M.  Forbes 
Professor  Peirce 
E.  P.  Whipple 
G.  S.  Hillard 
H.  Woodman 
Dr.  Estes  Howe 
Professor  Gray 
R.  W.  Emerson 
George  William  Curtis 
T.  G.  Appleton 
Dr.  Palfrey 
H.  W.  Longfellow 


340  The  Saturday  Club 

Probably,  with  the  addition  of  Cabot,  whom  Mr.  Fields  forgot, 
the  above  list  is  correct. 

Dr.  Holmes  rose  to  the  occasion  with  his  poem.  In  its  opening 
verses  he  voices  the  unfriendly  attitude,  for  the  time,  of  the 
English  Government,  yet  claims  our  equal  right  in  Shakspeare. 

SHAKSPEARE 

Who  claims  our  Shakspeare  from  that  realm  unknown 
Beyond  the  storm-vexed  islands  of  the  deep, 
Where  Genoa's  roving  mariner  was  blown? 
Her  twofold  Saints'-day  let  our  England  keep; 
Shall  warring  aliens  share  her  holy  task? 
The  Old  World  echoes  ask. 

O  land  of  Shakspeare!  ours  with  all  thy  past, 
Till  these  last  years  that  make  the  sea  so  wide, 
Think  not  the  jar  of  battle's  trumpet-blast 
Has  dulled  our  aching  sense  to  joyous  pride 
In  every  noble  word  thy  sons  bequeathed  — 
The  air  our  fathers  breathed ! 

War-wasted,  haggard,  panting  from  the  strife. 

We  turn  to  other  days  and  far-off  lands, 

Live  o'er  in  dreams  the  Poet's  faded  life. 

Come  with  fresh  lilies  in  our  fevered  hands 

To  wreathe  his  bust  and  scatter  purple  flowers,  — 

Not  his  the  need,  but  ours! 

We  call  those  poets  who  are  the  first  to  mark 
Through  earth's  dull  mist  the  coming  of  the  dawn,  — 
Who  see  in  twilight's  gloom  the  first  pale  spark, 
While  others  only  note  that  day  is  gone; 
For  him  the  Lord  of  light  the  curtain  rent 
That  veils  the  firmament. 


Yet  heaven's  remotest  orb  is  partly  ours, 
Throbbing  its  radiance  like  a  beating  heart; 
In  the  wide  compass  of  angelic  powers 
The  instinct  of  the  blind  worm  has  its  part; 
So  in  God's  kingliest  creature  we  behold 
The  flower  our  buds  infold. 


i864 


341 


With  no  vain  praise  we  mock  the  stone-carved  name 
Stamped  once  on  dust  that  moved  with  pulse  and  breath, 
As  thinking  to  enlarge  that  amplest  fame 
Whose  undimmed  glories  gild  the  night  of  death. 
We  praise  not  star  or  sun;  in  these  we  see 
Thee,  Father,  only  thee! 

Thy  gifts  are  beauty,  wisdom,  power  and  love; 
We  read,  we  reverence  in  this  human  soul,  — 
Earth's  clearest  mirror  of  the  light  above,  — 
Plain  as  the  record  on  Thy  prophet's  scroll. 
When  o'er  his  page  the  affluent  splendours  poured, 
Thine  own  "Thus  saith  the  Lord!" 


In  this  dread  hour  of  Nature's  utmost  need, 
Thanks  for  these  unstained  drops  of  freshening  dew! 
Oh,  while  our  martyrs  fall,  our  heroes  bleed. 
Keep  us  to  every  sweet  remembrance  true. 
Till  from  this  blood-red  sunset  springs  new-born 
Our  Nation's  second  morn ! 

Mr.  Emerson,  In  his  journal  the  next  day,  wrote:  — 

"We  regretted  much  the  absence  of  Mr.  Bryant,  and  Whittier, 
Edward  Everett,  and  William  Hunt,  who  had  at  first  accepted 
our  invitations,  but  were  prevented  at  last;  and  of  Hawthorne, 
Dana,  Sumner,  Motley,  and  Ward,  of  the  Club,  necessarily 
absent;  also  of  Charles  Sprague,  and  Wendell  Phillips  and  T.  W. 
Parsons,  and  George  Ticknor,  who  had  declined  our  invitations. 
William  Hunt  graced  our  hall  by  sending  us  his  full-length  picture 
of  Hamlet,  a  noble  sketch.  It  was  a  quiet  and  happy  evening 
filled  with  many  good  speeches,  from  Agassiz  who  presided  (with 
Longfellow  as  croupier^  but  silent),  Dr.  Frothingham,  Winthrop, 
Palfrey,  White,  Curtis,  Hedge,  Lowell,  Hillard,  Clarke,  Governor 
Andrew,  Hoar,  Weiss,  and  a  fine  poem  by  Holmes,  read  so  ad- 
mirably well  that  I  could  not  tell  whether  in  itself  it  were  one  of 
his  best  or  not.   The  company  broke  up  at  11:30. 

"One  of  Agassiz's  introductory  speeches  was,  *Many  years 
ago,  when  I  was  a  young  man,  I  was  introduced  to  a  very  estim- 
able lady  in  Paris,  who  in  the  conversation  said  to  me  that  she 
wondered  how  a  man  of  sense  could  spend  his  days  in  dissecting 


342  T^he  Saturday  Club 

a  fish.  I  replied,  "  Madame,  If  I  could  live  by  a  brook  which  had 
plenty  of  gudgeons,  I  should  ask  nothing  better  than  to  spend  all 
my  life  there."  But  since  I  have  been  in  this  country,  I  have 
become  acquainted  with  a  Club,  in  which  I  meet  men  of  various 
talents;  one  man  of  profound  scholarship  in  the  languages;  one 
of  elegant  literature,  or  a  high  mystic  poet;  or  one  man  of  large 
experience  in  the  conduct  of  affairs;  one  who  teaches  the  blind  to 
see,  and,  I  confess,  that  I  have  enlarged  my  views  of  life;  and 
I  think  that  besides  a  brook  full  of  gudgeons,  I  should  wish  to 
meet  once  a  month  such  a  society  of  friends.'" 

The  following  comes  soon  after  in  Emerson's  journal:  — 

"And  Shakspeare.  How  to  say  it,  I  know  not,  but  I  know  that 
the  point  of  praise  of  Shakspeare  is,  the  pure  poetic  power;  he  is  the 
chosen  closet  companion,  who  can,  at  any  moment,  by  incessant 
surprises,  work  the  miracle  of  mythologizing  every  fact  of  the 
Cbmmon  life ;  as  snow,  or  moonlight,  or  the  level  rays  of  sunrise  — 
lend  a  momentary  glory  to  every  pump  and  woodpile." 

Cabot,  in  his  Memoir  of  Emerson,  tells  the  following  story  of 
him  on  this  occasion:  "He  rarely  attempted  the  smallest  speech 
impromptu,  and  never,  I  believe,  with  success.  I  remember  his 
getting  up  at  a  dinner  of  the  Saturday  Club  on  the  Shakspeare 
anniversary  in  1864  to  which  some  guests  had  been  invited;  look- 
ing about  him  tranquilly  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  then  sitting 
down;  serene  and  unabashed,  but  unable  to  say  a  word  upon  a 
subject  so  familiar  to  his  thoughts  from  boyhood."  ^ 

Mr.  Tom  Appleton  noted  concerning  this  anniversary:  "In  the 
city  of  Boston  addresses  were  made  before  the  New  England 
Historic  Genealogical  Society  in  the  Hall  of  Representatives  at 
the  State  House,  now  the  Senate  Chamber;  at  Music  Hall  there 
was  a  music  festival  inaugurated  by  Mendelssohn's  *  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream';  all  the  theatres  produced  Shakspeare's  plays, 
and  the  members  of  one  social  club  pledged  each  other  in  a  cup  of 
sack." 

^  Yet  the  address  "Shakspeare"  printed  in  the  Miscellanies  (Emerson's  Works,  Cen- 
tenary Edition)  seems  beyond  question,  by  internal  and  external  evidence,  to  have  been 
prepared  for  this  occasion.  On  the  manuscript  Mr.  Emerson  noted  that  it  was  read  at  the 
Club's  celebration  of  that  occasion,  and  at  the  Revere  House.  Yet  the  handwriting  is  that 
of  Mr.  Emerson's  later  years,  so  it  is  possible  that  Mr.  Cabot  was  right.  Perhaps  Mr. 
Emerson  forgot  to  bring  his  notes  with  him  and  so  did  not  venture  to  speak. 


i864 


3+3 


The  Transcript  extolled  in  its  next  issue  Mr.  Lang's  Grand 
Festival  Concert  at  the  Music  Hall:  "The  grand  association  of 
names  and  subjects  which  the  occasion  furnishes,  Shakspeare, 
Goethe,  Beethoven,  and  Mendelssohn;  the  'Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,'  'Coriolanus,'  'The  First  Walpurgis  Night,'  make  the 
choicest  attraction  for  refined  and  cultivated  tastes."  I  believe 
it  is  true  that  our  member  Mr.  John  S.  Dwight  bore  an  important 
part  in  the  organization  and  management  of  that  musical  festival. 

On  the  27th,  Appleton  wrote  his  half  brother,  Lieutenant  Na- 
than Appleton,  recovered  from  his  wound  and  then  in  camp  in 
Virginia:  "We  had  for  Shakspearian  a  famous  field-day  of  our 
Saturday  Club.  All  the  wits  were  there,  and  speeches,  one  better 
than  another,  were  made  by  everybody.  Brother  Henry  [Long- 
fellow] made  his  first  public  appearance  then,  and  looked  very 
grand  at  the  head  of  the  table." 

And  yet  none  of  the  wit  and  eloquence  was  recorded. 

Had  Mr.  James  been  present  at  the  Shakspeare  festival  —  he 
was  abroad  at  the  time  —  the  general  praise  might  have  been 
spiced  by  this  view  found  in  the  Autobiographical  Fragment: 
"Ecclesiastics  and  men  of  science  conceive  that  men  are  alto- 
gether sufficiently  created  when  they  are  naturally  born.  But  natu- 
ral constitution  is  not  spiritual  creation,  by  a  long  odds.  It  is 
proof,  no  doubt,  to  our  heavy  wit  that  something  has  been  created: 
but  what,  we  do  not  know.  We  sometimes  fancy  that  the  creative 
energy  is  conspicuous  in  endowing  the  temperament  of  genius, 
and  producing  such  persons  as  Shakspeare,  Newton,  and  Frank- 
lin. .  .  .  Now  revelation  makes  exceedingly  light  of  Shakspeare. 
.  .  .  For  it  represents  no  man  as  really  created,  who  is  unredeemed 
from  his  natural  selfhood,  or  unclothed  with  a  regenerate  person- 
ality. Our  emulative  Shakspeares,  Newtons,  and  Franklins  may 
doubtless  find  this  law  hard.  .  .  .  Nevertheless,  such  is  the  law  of 
creation  which  revelation  discloses,  whatever  man  of  genius  may 
think  of  it;  and  it  is  decidedly  wiser  at  the  start  to  try  to  under- 
stand it  before  proceeding  to  reject  it.  I  am  persuaded  for  my 
own  part  that  there  is  nothing  really  hard  in  the  animus  of  the 
law;  but,  on  the  contrary,  everything  that  is  amiable  and  blessed." 

Two  days  after  the  Shakspeare  Festival,  but  with  no  connection, 


344  The  Saturday  Club 

except  as  regards  the  history  of  the  poet,  the  Daily  Advertiser 
copies  from  the  Dedham  Gazette  the  following  concerning  one  of  our 
members:  "We  are  glad  to  learn  that  the  proposition  to  sever  the 
connection  between  the  College  and  the  State  is  meeting  with  great 
favour.  .  .  .  During  the  present  season  John  G.  Whittier  was 
denied  a  reelection  to  a  position  which  he  dignified  and  adorned 
because  two  or  three  clergymen  of  indifferent  reputation  and  quali- 
fications endeavoured  to  *mix  in.'  ..." 

In  the  spring  of  1864,  Mr.  Dana  tells  in  his  diary  that  he  went 
to  Washington  on  official  business,  and  used  the  occasion  to  visit 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac  but  a  few  days  before  Grant  advanced 
into  the  Wilderness  with  its  succession  of  desperate  fights.  He  was 
the  guest  of  Captain  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  then  command- 
ing a  detachment  of  the  First  Massachusetts  Cavalry,  serving  as 
guard,  at  General  Meade's  headquarters.  He  wrote  of  his  pleas- 
ure in  meeting  Generals  Meade  and  Humphreys,  gentlemen,  well 
bred,  courteous,  honourable  men;  and  Sedgwick,  bluff,  pleasant, 
hearty  fellow,  brave  and  self-possessed  and  a  thorough  fighter, 
adding:  "Headquarters  is  an  inspiriting,  Washington  a  dispirit- 
ing, place." 

A  few  days  later,  he  writes  from  Washington:  "The  President 
told  me  he  had  read  my  pamphlet  on  the  decision  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  1  and  that  it  cleared  up  his  mind  on  the  subject  entirely; 
that  it  reasoned  out  and  put  into  scientific  statement  what  he 
had  all  along  felt  in  his  bones  must  be  the  truth." 

James  T.  Fields  wrote :2  "On  the  28th  of  March,  Hawthorne 
came  to  town  and  made  my  house  his  first  station  on  a  journey  to 
the  South  for  health.  I  was  greatly  shocked  at  his  invalid  appear- 
ance, and  he  seemed  quite  deaf.  The  light  in  his  eye  was  beautiful 
as  ever,  but  his  limbs  seemed  shrunken  and  his  usual  stalwart 
vigour  utterly  gone.  He  said  to  me  with  a  pathetic  voice,  'Why 
does  Nature  treat  us  like  little  children!  I  think  we  could  bear 
it  all  if  we  knew  our  fate;  at  least  it  would  not  make  much  differ- 
ence to  me  now  what  became  of  me.'  Toward  night  he  brightened 
up  a  little,  and  his  delicious  wit  flashed  out,  at  Intervals,  as  of  old; 
but  he  was  evidently  broken  and  dispirited  about  his  health." 

1  On  the  blockading  rights  of  the  United  States.  2  Yesterdays  with  Authors. 


i864 


345 


The  result  was  sad  and  far  from  helpful.  Mr.  William  Ticknor, 
his  companion,  died  suddenly  in  Philadelphia  on  their  south- 
ward journey.  In  May,  Hawthorne  set  forth  again,  this  time 
northward,  with  his  old  college  friend  and  his  benefactor  in  the 
consular  appointment,  ex-President  Pierce,  of  whose  political 
misdeeds  with  regard  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska  he  probably  had 
—  as  a  man  living  in  his  dreams,  remote  from  politics  —  little 
knowledge.  His  Life  of  Franklin  Pierce,  designed  as  a  campaign 
document  in  1852,  had  preceded  these.  Dr.  Holmes  had  been 
told  that  Hawthorne,  seriously  ailing,  and  about  to  set  forth  on 
this  journey  for  health,  was  to  spend  the  night  at  a  Boston  hotel. 
He  felt  moved  to  visit  him  there,  hoping  to  learn  something  of  his 
symptoms  and  perhaps  make  some  helpful  suggestions.  Haw- 
thorne, he  said,  was  gentle,  and  docile  to  counsel,  but  so  hesitant 
"  that  talking  with  him  was  almost  like  love-making,  and  his  shy, 
beautiful  soul  had  to  be  wooed  from  its  bashful  pudency  like  an 
unschooled  maiden."  He  evidently  had  no  hope.  "The  calm 
despondency  with  which  he  spoke  about  himself  confirmed  the 
unfavourable  opinion  suggested  by  his  look  and  history." 

On  May  19,  Hawthorne  died,  sleeping,  at  Plymouth,  New  Hamp- 
shire. The  husband  of  his  younger  daughter  Rose,  George  Par- 
sons Lathrop,  wrote:  "He  passed  on  into  the  shadow  as  if  of  his 
own  will,  feeling  that  his  Country  lay  in  ruins,  that  the  human 
lot  carried  with  it  more  hate  and  horror  and  sorrow  than  he  could 
longer  bear  to  look  at;  welcoming —  except  as  those  dear  to  him 
were  concerned  —  the  prospect  of  that  death  which  he  alone  knew 
to  be  so  near.  .  .  .  Afterward  it  was  recalled  with  a  kind  of  awe 
that,  through  many  years  of  his  life,  Hawthorne  had  been  in  the 
habit,  when  trying  his  pen,  or  idly  scribbling  at  any  time,  of 
writing  the  number  of  sixty-four;  as  if  the  foreknowledge  of  his 
death  .  .  .  had  already  begun  to  manifest  itself  in  this  indirect 
way  long  before." 

Dr.  Holmes  wrote  in  his  journal:  "On  the  24th  of  May  we  car- 
ried Hawthorne  through  the  blossoming  orchards  of  Concord,  and 
laid  him  down  under  a  group  of  pines,  on  a  hillside,  overlooking 
historic  fields.  All  the  way  from  the  village  church  to  the  grave  the 
birds  kept  up  a  perpetual  melody.    The  sun  shone  brightly,  and 


34^  The  Saturday  Club 

the  air  was  sweet  and  pleasant,  as  if  death  had  never  entered  the 
World.  Longfellow  and  Emerson,  Channing  and  Hoar,  Agassiz 
and  Lowell,  Greene  and  Whipple,  Alcott  and  Clarke,  Holmes  and 
Hillard,  and  other  friends  whom  he  loved,  walked  slowly  by  his  side 
that  beautiful  spring  morning.  The  companion  of  his  youth  and 
his  manhood,  for  whom  he  would  willingly,  at  any  time,  have  given 
up  his  own  life,  Franklin  Pierce,  was  there  among  the  rest,  and 
scattered  flowers  into  the  grave.  The  unfinished  Romance,  which 
had  cost  him  so  much  anxiety,  the  last  literary  work  on  which  he 
had  ever  been  engaged,  was  laid  on  his  coffin." 

On  the  next  day  Emerson  wrote  in  his  journal:  — 

"Yesterday,  we  buried  Hawthorne  in  Sleepy  Hollow,  in  a 
pomp  of  sunshine  and  verdure,  and  gentle  winds.  James  Free- 
man Clarke  read  the  service  in  the  church  and  at  the  grave, 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Agassiz,  Hoar,  Dwight,  Whipple, 
Norton,  Alcott,  Hillard,  Fields,  Judge  Thomas,  and  I  attended 
the  hearse  as  pallbearers.  Franklin  Pierce  was  with  the  family. 
The  church  was  copiously  decorated  with  white  flowers  delicately 
arranged.  The  corpse  was  unwillingly  shown  —  only  a  few  mo- 
ments to  this  company  of  his  friends.  But  it  was  noble  and  serene 
in  its  aspect  —  nothing  amiss  —  a  calm  and  powerful  head.  A 
large  company  filled  the  church  and  the  grounds  of  the  cemetery. 
All  was  so  bright  and  quiet  that  pain  or  mourning  was  hardly  sug- 
gested, and  Holmes  said  to  me  that  it  looked  like  a  happy  meeting. 

"Clarke  in  the  church  said  that  Hawthorne  had  done  more 
justice  than  any  other  to  the  shades  of  life,  shown  a  sympathy 
with  the  crime  in  our  nature,  and,  like  Jesus,  was  the  friend  of 
sinners.  I  thought  there  was  a  tragic  element  in  the  event,  that 
might  be  more  fully  rendered  —  in  the  painful  solitude  of  the  man, 
which,  I  suppose,  could  not  longer  be  endured,  and  he  died  of  it. 

"I  have  found  in  his  death  a  surprise  and  disappointment.  I 
thought  him  a  greater  man  than  any  of  his  works  betray,  that 
there  was  still  a  great  deal  of  work  in  him,  and  that  he  might  one 
day  show  a  purer  power.  Moreover,  I  have  felt  sure  of  him  in  his 
neighbourhood,  and  in  his  necessities  of  sympathy  and  intelligence 

—  that  I  could  well  wait  his  time  —  his  unwillingness  and  caprice 

—  and  might  one  day  conquer  a  friendship.    It  would  have  been 


i864 


347 


a  happiness,  doubtless  to  both  of  us,  to  have  come  into  habits  of 
unreserved  intercourse.  It  was  easy  to  talk  with  him — there 
were  no  barriers  —  only,  he  said  so  little,  that  I  talked  too  much, 
and  stopped  only  because,  as  he  gave  no  indications,  I  feared  to 
exceed.  He  showed  no  egotism  or  self-assertion,  rather  a  humility, 
and,  at  one  time,  a  fear  that  he  had  written  himself  out.  One  day, 
when  I  found  him  on  the  top  of  his  hill,  in  the  woods,  he  paced 
back  the  path  to  his  house,  and  said,  'This  path  is  the  only  re- 
membrance of  me  that  will  remain.'  Now  it  appears  that  I  waited 
too  long. 

"Lately  he  had  removed  himself  the  more  by  the  indignation 
his  perverse  politics  and  unfortunate  friendship  for  that  paltry 
Franklin  Pierce  awakened,  though  it  rather  moved  pity  for  Haw- 
thorne, and  the  assured  belief  that  he  would  outlive  it,  and  come 
right  at  last. 

"I  have  forgotten  in  what  year  ^  [September  27,  1842],  but  it 
was  whilst  he  lived  in  the  Manse,  soon  after  his  marriage,  that  I 
said  to  him,  'I  shall  never  see  you  in  this  hazardous  way;  we  must 
take  a  long  walk  together.  Will  you  go  to  Harvard  and  visit  the 
Shakers.?'  He  agreed,  and  we  took  a  June  day,  and  walked  the 
twelve  miles,  got  our  dinner  from  the  Brethren,  slept  at  the  Har- 
vard Inn,  and  returned  home  by  another  road,  the  next  day.  It 
was  a  satisfactory  tramp,  and  we  had  good  talk  on  the  way,  of 
which  I  set  down  some  record  in  my  journal." 

Longfellow,  returned  from  Hawthorne's  funeral,  wrote  these 
verses,  saying  of  them  to  Mrs.  Hawthorne,  "I  feel  how  imperfect 
and  inadequate  they  are;  but  I  trust  you  will  pardon  their  de- 
ficiencies for  the  love  I  bear  his  memory":  — 

"How  beautiful  it  was,  that  one  bright  day 

In  the  long  week  of  rain, 
Though  all  its  splendour  could  not  chase  away 
The  omnipresent  pain. 

"The  lovely  town  was  white  with  apple-blooms, 
And  the  great  elms  o'erhead 
Dark  shadows  wove  on  their  aerial  looms 
Shot  through  with  golden  thread. 

*  The  paragraph  which  follows  was  later  added  to  the  above  by  Mr.  Emerson. 


34^  l^he  Saturday  Club 

"Across  the  meadows,  by  the  gray  old  manse, 
The  historic  river  flowed; 
I  was  as  one  who  wanders  in  a  trance, 
Unconscious  of  his  road. 

"The  faces  of  familiar  friends  seemed  strange; 
Their  voices  I  could  hear, 
And  yet  the  words  they  uttered  seemed  to  change 
Their  meaning  to  my  ear, 

"  For  the  one  face  I  looked  for  was  not  there, 
The  one  low  voice  was  mute; 
Only  an  unseen  presence  filled  the  air 
And  baffled  my  pursuit. 

"Now  I  look  back,  and  meadow,  manse  and  stream 
Dimly  my  thought  defines; 
I  only  see  —  a  dream  within  a  dream  — 
The  hill-top  hearsed  with  pines. 

"I  only  hear  above  his  place  of  rest 
Their  tender  undertone. 
The  infinite  longings  of  a  troubled  breast, 
The  voice  so  like  his  own. 

"There  in  seclusion  and  remote  from  men 
The  wizard  hand  lies  cold. 
Which  at  its  topmost  speed  let  fall  the  pen 
And  left  the  tale  half-told. 

"Ah!  who  shall  lift  that  wand  of  magic  power, 
And  the  lost  clew  regain? 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 
Unfinished  must  remain!" 

Of  SO  unique  a  character,  withdrawn  like  a  wood-thrush  Into 
solitude  by  his  instincts,  yet  curious  of  the  lives  and  motives  of 
men  and  women,  and  by  them  variously  conceived  of  through 
inference  from  his  books,  it  seems  well  to  present  here  estimates 
by  some  who  actually  knew  him,  and  others  who  met  him  for- 
tunately. 

First,  that  of  his  nearest  college  friend,^  Horatio  Bridge:  — 
"  Hawthorne,  with  rare  strength  of  character,  had  yet  a  gentle- 

^  Personal  Recollections  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 


i864 


349 


ness  and  unselfishness  which  endeared  him  greatly  to  his  friends. 
He  was  a  gentleman  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  and  he  was  al- 
ways manly,  cool,  self-poised,  and  brave.  He  was  neither  morose 
nor  sentimental;  and  though  taciturn,  was  invariably  cheerful 
with  his  chosen  friends;  and  there  was  much  more  of  fun  and  frolic 
in  his  disposition  than  his  published  writings  indicate." 

In  the  dedication  to  Bridge  of  The  Snow  Image  Hawthorne 
says:  — 

"If  anybody  is  responsible  for  my  being  at  this  day  an  author, 
it  is  yourself.  I  know  not  whence  your  faith  came,  but  while  we 
were  lads  together  at  a  country  college,  gathering  blueberries  in 
study  hours  under  those  tall  academic  pines,  or  watching  the 
great  logs  as  they  tumbled  along  the  current  of  the  Androscoggin, 
.  .  .  two  idle  lads,  in  short  (as  we  need  not  fear  to  acknowledge 
now),  doing  a  hundred  things  that  the  Faculty  never  heard  of,  or 
else  it  would  have  been  the  worse  for  us  —  still,  it  was  your  prog- 
nostic of  your  friend's  destiny  that  he  was  to  be  a  writer  of  fiction. 
And  a  fiction-monger  he  became  in  due  season.  But  was  there  ever 
such  a  weary  delay  in  obtaining  the  slightest  recognition  from  the 
public  as  in  my  case.?  I  sat  down  by  the  wayside  of  life,  like  a  man 
under  enchantment,  and  a  shrubbery  sprang  up  around  me,  and 
the  bushes  grew  to  be  saplings,  and  the  saplings  became  trees, 
until  no  exit  appeared  possible  through  the  entangling  depths  of 
my  obscurity.  And  there,  perhaps,  I  should  be  sitting  at  this 
moment,  with  the  moss  on  the  imprisoning  tree-trunks,  and  the 
yellow  leaves  of  more  than  a  score  of  autumns  piled  above  me,  if 
it  had  not  been  for  you.  For  it  was  through  your  interposition  — 
and  that,  moreover,  unknown  to  himself  —  that  your  early  friend 
was  brought  before  the  public  somewhat  more  prominently  than 
theretofore  in  the  first  volume  of  Twice-Told  Tales.  Not  a  pub- 
lisher in  America,  I  presume,  would  have  thought  well  enough  of 
my  forgotten  or  never-noticed  stories  to  risk  the  expense  of  print 
and  paper;  nor  do  I  say  this  with  any  purpose  of  casting  odium 
on  the  respectable  fraternity  of  booksellers  for  their  blindness  to 
my  wonderful  merit.  To  confess  the  truth  I  doubted  of  the  public 
recognition  quite  as  much  as  they  could  do." 

Mr.  Fields  by  his  genial  character,  and  encouragement  as  a 


350  The  Saturday  Club 


publisher,  won  his  way  through  the  outworks  of  the  enchanted 
castle  in  which  Hawthorne  was  doomed  to  live.  In  his  Yesterdays 
with  Authors^  dedicated  to  this  Club,  he  opens  his  notes  on  Haw- 
thorne by  a  passage  in  which  he  speaks  of  him  as  "The  rarest 
genius  America  has  given  to  literature  —  a  man  who  lately  so- 
journed in  this  busy  world  of  ours,  but  during  many  years  of  his 
life 

'Wandered  lonely  as  a  cloud,'  — 

a  man  who  had,  so  to  speak,  a  physical  affinity  with  solitude.  The 
writings  of  this  author  have  never  soiled  the  public  mind  with  one 
unlovely  image.  His  men  and  women  have  a  magic  of  their  own, 
and  we  shall  wait  a  long  time  before  another  arises  among  us  to 
take  his  place.  Indeed,  it  seems  probable  no  one  will  ever  walk 
precisely  the  same  round  of  fiction  which  he  traversed  with  so  free 
and  firm  a  step." 

Fields,  always  kind  and  helpful  to  the  grateful  recluse,  knew  and 
hesitated  not  to  climb  the  worn  hillside  footpath  "where  he  might 
be  found  in  good  weather,  when  not  employed  in  the  tower.  While 
walking  to  and  f ro  .  .  .  he  meditated  and  composed  innumerable 
romances  that  were  never  written,  as  well  as  some  that  were.  Here 
he  first  announced  to  me  his  plan  of  'The  Dolliver  Romance,'  and, 
from  what  he  told  me  of  his  design  of  the  story  as  it  existed  in  his 
mind,  I  thought  it  would  have  been  the  greatest  of  his  books. 
An  enchanting  memory  is  left  of  that  morning  when  he  laid  out 
the  whole  story  before  me  as  he  intended  to  write  it. 

"The  portrait  I  am  looking  at  was  made  by  Rowse  (an  ex- 
quisite drawing),  and  is  a  very  truthful  representation  of  the  head 
of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  He  was  several  times  painted  and 
photographed,  but  it  was  impossible  for  art  to  give  the  light  and 
beauty  of  his  wonderful  eyes.  I  remember  to  have  heard,  in  the 
literary  circles  of  London,  that,  since  Burns,  no  author  had  ap- 
peared there  with  so  fine  a  face  as  Hawthorne." 

And  again,  "A  hundred  years  ago  Henry  Vaughan  seems  almost 
to  have  anticipated  Hawthorne's  appearance  when  he  wrote  that 
beautiful  line,  — 

'Feed  on  the  vocal  silence  of  his  eye.'" 


i864 


351 


Here  are  two  estimates  from  good  men  who  had  never  met  our 
romancer.  The  first  is  from  Dr.  James  Kendall  Hosmer:  ^  — 

"Hawthorne  portrays,  but  he  draws  no  lesson  any  more  than 
Shakspeare;  his  books  are  pictures  of  the  souls  of  men,  of  the  sweet 
and  wholesome  things  and  also  the  weakness,  the  sin,  and  the 
morbid  defect.  These  having  been  revealed,  the  reader  is  left  to 
his  own  inferences.  It  is  fully  made  plain  that  he  was  a  soft- 
hearted man,  at  any  rate  in  his  earlier  time.  The  stories  he  wrote 
at  the  outset  for  children  are  often  full  of  sweetness  and  sympathy. 
But  as  he  went  on  with  his  work  these  qualities  are  less  apparent." 

William  Allingham,  the  Irish  poet,  paid  this  tribute:  — 

"There  is  in  life  a  drift  of  dreamy  ghostly  evanescences  moving 
through  our  subconsciousness;  these  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  has 
embodied  in  words,  has  actually  fixed  on  paper  without  dishonor- 
ing a  mystic  atom  of  their  ethereality.  His  reticency  as  a  story- 
teller is  a  great  part  of  the  charm;  he  ever  leaves  a  dubitation 
floating;  the  bounding  lines  are  touched  here  and  there  with  mist. 
He  is  politely  evasive  when  you  scrutinize  him,  yet  you  cannot 
fail  to  be  aware  that  not  one  man  in  a  million  observes  with  such 
keen  minuteness." 

Governor  Andrew  felt  that  Lincoln  must  be  elected.  To  Forbes, 
who  had  written  to  him,  "If  I  can  do  any  good  as  a  Drummer-up,  I 
will  go  to  the  world's  end,"  he  answered,  "What  an  unspeakably 
dull  canvass!  It  ought  to  be  aroused."  He  arranged  for  a  war- 
meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall  to  celebrate  Farragut's  victory  at  Mobile 
Bay  and  Sherman's  at  Atlanta.  His  biographer  says:  "The  hall 
was  packed.  Andrew  in  his  most  eloquent  impromptu  fashion 
struck  one  quick  blow  after  another.  Man  of  peace  as  he  was,  he 
declared  that  for  the  last  few  days  he  himself  had  been  seized 
by  the  'cannon  fever.'  A  ringing  letter  from  Edward  Everett 
was  read,  and  Sumner,  Wilson,  and  Boutwell  spoke."  A  successful 
New  York  meeting  followed,  and  our  Governor  wrote  to  the  Gov- 
ernors of  Illinois,  Ohio,  and  Indiana,  urging  them  to  join  him  in 
Washington,  to  check  the  peace  arguments  of  the  Republican 
managers.   The  crying  need  was  "  that  the  President  should  be 

^  The  Last  Leaf. 


352  "The  Saturday  Club 

rescued  from  the  influences  which  threaten  him  .  .  .  from  those 
who  .  .  .  are  tempting  and  pushing  him  to  an  unworthy  and  dis- 
graceful off'er  to  compromise  with  the  leaders  of  the  Rebellion.  I 
want  the  President  now  to  take  hold  of  his  occasion,  and  really 
lead,  as  he  might,  the  Country  by  exhibiting  in  the  person  of 
him  who  wields  its  highest  power  the  genuine  representative  of 
democratic  instincts  and  principles."  ^  The  momentum  that  An- 
drew and  his  friend  had  gained  from  their  labours  of  the  last  two 
weeks  continued;  and  all  went  well. 

The  public  events  now  began  to  cheer  even  the  doubters  and 
strengthened  the  President  during  the  summer  and  autumn; 
Grant's  steadily  advancing  aggressive  until  his  forces  sat  down 
before  Petersburg  with  dogged  determination;  Sheridan's  suc- 
cesses in  the  Shenandoah  Valley;  Sherman's  demonstration  that 
the  Confederacy  was  but  a  shell ;  the  possession  by  the  Navy  of 
the  Gulf  and  the  Mississippi;  the  sinking  of  the  Alabama  by  the 
Kearsarge  in  the  English  Channel;  the  decision  by  the  Supreme 
Court  as  to  the  right  of  the  United  States  to  establish  and  en- 
force the  blockade,  admittedly  due  to  Dana's  forceful  argument; 
and,  finally,  the  triumphant  expression  of  the  American  people's  will 
to  uphold  the  Union  and  forever  free  the  slave,  by  Lincoln's  reelec- 
tion. To  this  latter  end  there  can  be,  I  think,  hardly  a  doubt  that 
all  the  members  of  the  Club  had  worked,  or  lent  their  influence. 

But  all  these  great  events  were  an  increasing  strain  on  the 
Country.  In  June,  Mr.  Forbes,  writing  to  Chase,  the  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  said:  "One  of  our  leading  manufacturers  is  sitting 
beside  me  and  says,  'Tell  Mr.  Chase  that  I  represent  about  one 
half  of  the  manufacturers  in  saying  that  we  shall  welcome  any 
amount  of  taxation  on  manufactures,  provided  import-duties  keep 
pace  with  them,  and  do  not  get  so  high  as  to  defeat  their  object 
by  smuggling.'  I  say  the  same  for  every  interest  that  I  am  con- 
cerned in  —  railroads,  teas,  income.  We  have  got  to  a  pass  when 
all  who  have  brains  enough  to  get  or  keep  property  cry  out  even 
in  mere  selfishness  — ■  'Tax  us  for  our  own  preservation!'" 

Mr.  Robert  Ferguson  of  Carlisle,  England,  visited  Cambridge 
during  this  summer,  and,  on  his  return,  gave  these  recollections 

^  The  Life  of  John  A.  Andrew,  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  by  Henry  Greenleaf  Pearson. 


i864 


353 


in  his  book,  America  during  and  after  the  War.  He  speaks  of 
Charles  Sumner's  close  friendship  with  Longfellow:  "An  interest- 
ing sight  it  was  to  see  these  two  men  ...  so  kindred,  and  yet  so 
different,  sitting  together  on  the  eve  of  the  great  contest  which  was 
to  decide  the  place  of  America  in  the  world's  history;  Sumner, 
with  the  poet's  little  daughter  nestling  in  his  lap,  —  for  he  is  a  man 
to  whom  all  children  come,  —  discussing  some  question  of  Euro- 
pean literature." 

Mr.  Ferguson  also  notes:  "Often,  too,  comes  Agassiz  with  his 
gentle  and  genial  spirit,  his  childlike  devotion  to  science  and  his 
eager  interest  in  the  politics  of  the  day.  .  .  .  Wje  went  to  one  of 
his  lectures  at  the  University  in  the  course  of  which  he  exhorted 
his  hearers  to  strive  to  take  the  same  pleasure  in  the  scientific 
discoveries  of  others  as  in  their  own  —  a  noble  aim,  yet,  ah!  how 
difficult  to  attain.  And  often,  too,  comes  Dana,  one  of  the  most 
charming  of  talkers  and  more  especially  with  his  sea-stories." 

Appleton's  journal  records  that "  Just  previous  to  November  28th, 
1864,  there  was  a  famous  dinner  for  Sumner  and  Captain  Wins- 
low,  of  the  Kearsarge,  and  Longfellow  and  Appleton  were  there." 
Possibly,  however,  this  was  not  the  Saturday  Club's  dinner. 

At  Christmas,  Longfellow  sent  to  Agassiz  a  present  of  wine, 
accompanied  by  a  poem  in  French,  "Noel,"  which  gave  great 
joy  and  was  thus  acknowledged  by  him  and  his  wife:  — 

My  dear  Longfellow:  — 

I  was  on  my  way  to  your  house  when,  thinking  of  my  mother, 
great  tears  began  to  fill  my  eyes,  and  fearing  to  be  taken  for  an 
idiot,  I  returned  home.  You,  then,  were  thinking  of  me  at  that 
moment;  I  have  just  received  the  proof  of  it,  only  an  hour  ago. 
Thanks,  a  thousand  times,  dear  friend.  I  am  as  proud  as  happy 
for  your  present.  Proud,  because  it  comes  from  Longfellow,  whom 
I  admire;  happy,  because  it  comes  from  Longfellow,  whom  I  love. 
And  then  also  I  can  let  my  good  mother  read  my  wine,  if  I  can- 
not let  her  taste  it. 

Adieu,  dear  friend.  Accept  the  good  wishes  of  Noel  which  I 
make  for  you.  .  .  .  Tout  a  vous, 

L.  Agassiz. 


354  The  Saturday  Club 

Mrs.  Agassiz  also  wrote:  "Your  birthday  poem  I  do  not  read 
to  this  day  without  emotion,  and  this  *Noel'  touches  the  same 
chord.  For,  witty  and  gay  and  graceful  as  it  is,  a  loving  sym- 
pathy for  Agassiz  pervades  every  line.  We  read  it  together,  not 
without  tears  as  well  as  laughter;  for  its  affectionate  tone  moved 
us  both.  Then  it  came  as  if  in  answer  to  a  thought  which  Agassiz 
had  just  expressed  —  that  it  seemed  so  sad  to  him  that  his 
'mother  should  never  share  in  our  enjoyment.'  Hardly  five  min- 
utes after,  your  note  was  handed  him  with  the  verses,  all  in 
French: and  our  first  exclamation  was,  'And  the  best  and  loveliest 
of  all  our  Christmas  gifts  can  be  fully  shared  by  her.'" 

NOEL 

Envoye  a  M.  Agassiz,  La  Veille  de  Noel,  1864,  avec  un  Panier  de 
Vins  divers. 

The  basket  of  wine  which  Mr.  Longfellow  sent  to  his  friend 
with  these  verses  was  accompanied  by  the  following  note:  "A 
Merry  Christmas  and  Happy  New  Year  to  all  the  house  of 
Agassiz!  I  send  also  six  good  wishes  in  the  shape  of  bottles.  Or 
is  it  wine.?  It  is  both;  good  wine  and  good  wishes  and  kind  memo- 
ries of  you  on  this  Christmas  Eve." 

(A  translation  of  the  verses  was  printed  by  Mr.  John  E.  Nor- 
cross  of  Philadelphia  in  a  brochure,  1867.) 

V Academic  en  respect, 
Nonobstant  rincorrection 
A  la  faveur  du  sujet, 

Ture-lure, 
tPy  fera  point  de  rature  ; 
Noel  I  ture-lure-lure. 

Gui-Barozai 

Quand  les  astres  de  Noel 
Brillaient,  palpitaient  au  ciel, 
Six  gaillards,  et  chacun  ivre, 
Chantaient  gaiment  dans  le  givre, 

•  "Bons  amis, 
AUons  done  chez  Agassiz!" 

Ces  illustres  Pelerins 
D'Outre-Mer,  adroits  et  fins, 


i864 


355 


Se  donnant  des  airs  de  pretre, 
A  I'envi  se  vantaient  d'etre,    ; 

"Bons  amis 
De  Jean-Rodolphe  Agassizl'* 

Oeil-de-Perdrix,  grand  farceur, 
Sans  reproche  et  sans  pudeur, 
Dans  son  patois  de  Bourgogne, 
Bredouillait  comme  un  ivrogne, 

"Bons  amis, 
J'ai  danse  chez  Agassiz!" 

Verzenay  le  Champenois, 
Bon  Fran^ais,  point  New-Yorquois, 
Mais  des  environs  d'Avize, 
Fredonne,  a  mainte  reprise, 

"Bons  amis, 
J'ai  chante  chez  Agassiz!" 

A  cote  marchait  un  vieux 
Hidalgo,  mais  non  mousseux;     * 
Dans  le  temps  de  Charlemagne 
Fut  son  pere  Grand  d'Espagne! 

"Bons  amis, 
J'ai  dine  chez  Agassiz!" 

Derriere  eux  un  Bordelais, 
Gascon,  s'il  en  fut  jamais, 
Parfume  de  poesie, 
Riait,  chantait,  plein  de  vie, 

"  Bons  amis, 
J'ai  soupe  chez  Agassiz!" 

Avec  ce  beau  cadet  roux, 
Bras  dessus  and  bras  dessous. 
Mine  altiere  et  couleur  terne, 
Vint  le  Sire  de  Sauterne: 

"Bons  amis, 
J'ai  couche  chez  Agassiz!" 

Mais  le  dernier  de  ces  preux 
Etait  un  pauvre  Chartreux, 
Qui  disait,  d'un  ton  robuste, 
'Benedictions  sur  le  Juste! 

Bons  amis, 
Benissons  Pere  Agassiz!" 


35^  'T'he  Saturday  Club 

lis  arrivent  trois  a  trois, 
Montent  I'escalier  de  bois 
Clopln-clopant!  quel  gendarme 
Peut  permettre  ce  vacarme, 

Bons  amis, 
A  la  porte  d'Agassiz! 

"  Ouvrez  done,  mon  bon  Seigneur, 
Ouvrez  vite  et  n'ayez  peur; 
Ouvrez,  ouvrez,  car  nous  sommes 
Gens  de  bien  et  gentilshommes, 

Bons  amis, 
De  la  famille  Agassiz!" 

Chut,  ganaches!  taisez-vous! 
C'en  est  trop  de  vos  glouglous; 
Epargnez  aux  Philosophes 
Vox  abominable  strophes! 

Bons  amis, 
Respectez  mon  Agassiz! 

In  this  year  the  Club  did  itself  honour  by  electing  John  Albion 
Andrew,  "Our  War-Governor,"  a  member.  It  was  in  their  eyes, 
and  really  in  fact,  a  life-saving  measure  for  this  noble  and  de- 
voted man.  It  was  necessary  to  invade  his  office  and,  almost  by 
force,  bring  him  away  for  sustaining  food,  relaxation,  and  the 
comfort  of  a  company,  loyal  and  sympathetic,  for  a  few  hours. 

With  him  were  chosen  Martin  Brimmer,  a  gentleman  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word,  cultivated,  kind,  and  ready  for  service; 
James  Thomas  Fields,  friendly  publisher,  hospitable  man,  and 
pleasant  writer,  at  this  time  editor  of  the  Atlantic;  and  Samuel 
Worcester  Rowse,  the  portrait  artist,  a  silent  man,  but  respected 
and  valued  by  the  few  who  knew  him  well. 


JOHN  ALBION  ANDREW 

John  Albion  Andrew  was  born  in  Windham,  Maine,  May  31, 
1 81 8.  His  ancestors  had  been  identified  with  Essex  County  from 
very  early  times.  His  father,  Jonathan  Andrew,  was  a  native  of 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  lived  on  a  farm,  and  was  the  owner  of  a 
country  store  and  for  some  time  the  postmaster.  The  boy  helped 
his  father  in  the  office  and  store  and  carried  on  his  studies 
chiefly  under  the  direction  of  his  mother  who  had  been  a  school- 
teacher. He  completed  his  preparation  for  college  at  Gorham 
Academy,  and  entered  Bowdoin  near  the  middle  of  the  fresh- 
man year,  graduating  when  he  was  nineteen  years  old.  Among  his 
teachers  at  Bowdoin  was  the  poet  Longfellow.  While  in  college 
he  won  distinction  as  a  speaker,  was  the  poet  of  his  class  at  its 
annual  meeting  in  his  junior  year,  and  wrote  a  hymn  for  the  Peace 
Society.  The  incident  in  his  career  at  Bowdoin  that  seemed  to 
affect  him  most  strongly  at  the  time,  and  that  very  likely  had  a 
more  determining  influence  on  his  later  career  than  any  other 
event  was  the  presence  of  George  Thompson,  the  English  Abo- 
litionist, who  made  two  visits  to  Brunswick  during  Andrew's 
course.  He  was  deeply  impressed  with  the  speeches  made  by 
Thompson,  and  one  of  them  he  could  recite  almost  word  for  word, 
and  in  the  manner  of  the  speaker.  While  he  was  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  he  said,  in  a  speech  in  Music  Hall,  that  he  remem- 
bered a  single  sentence  and  it  had  adhered  to  his  memory  and  "will 
last  there  while  memory  itself  endures."  The  following  is  the 
sentence  which  he  then  quoted:  "I  hesitate  not  to  say  that  in 
Christian  America,  the  land  of  Sabbath  schools,  of  religious  priv- 
ileges, of  temperance  societies  and  revivals,  there  exists  the  worst 
institution  in  the  world.  There  is  not  an  institution  which  the 
sun  in  the  heaven  shines  upon,  so  fraught  with  woe  to  man  as 
American  slavery."  From  that  time  he  was  an  Abolitionist,  but 
an  Abolitionist  who  did  not  believe  in  revolution,  but  aimed  to 
secure  freedom  through  constitutional  means.  After  graduation, 
he  entered  a  law  office  in  Boston,  and  was  admitted  to  the  Suffolk 


35^  "The  Saturday  Club 


Ban   He  remained  in  practice  long  enough  to  promise  distinction 
in  his  profession,  but  he  very  early  entered  politics.    He  took  a 
conspicuous  part  in  the  formation  of  the  Republican  Party,  but 
never  held  ofRce  until  1858,  when  he  served  as  a  member  of  the 
Legislature.    In  the  single  year  in  which  he  filled  the  office  he 
achieved  distinction  and  became  one  of  the  foremost  men  of  his 
party  in  the  State.  He  was  the  President  of  the  Republican  State 
Convention  in  1858,  was  offered  a  judgeship  by  Governor  Banks 
in  the  same  year,  and  in  i860  was  made  chairman  of  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Republican  delegation  to  the  convention  at  Chicago 
which  nominated  Lincoln  for  the  Presidency.   He  was  nominated 
as  the  Republican  candidate  for  Governor  of  Massachusetts  in 
i860,  and  elected  in  November  of  that  year.  He  held  the  office 
throughout  the  Civil  War.  After  his  retirement  from  the  Governor- 
ship he  resumed  the  practice  of  law  and  never  again  held  public 
office.  He  died  in  Boston  October  31,  1867.  His  life  was  doubtless 
shortened  by  his  labours  as  War-Governor,  and  it  was  the  success 
with  which  he  conducted  himself  in  that  office  that  gives  him  an 
enduring  fame. 

It  is  not  easy  for  one  who  never  saw  Andrew  to  give  a  speaking 
portrait  of  him,  such  as  might  have  been  drawn  by  those  who 
were  contemporaries  of  his  at  the  Saturday  Club.  I  have  perhaps 
one  qualification  which  may  enable  me  to  speak  with  some  discern- 
ment about  his  service  as  Governor  in  the  time  of  war,  and  I  can 
well  accept  the  statement  that  Governor  Andrew  was  a  very  busy 
and  indeed  an  overworked  man.  The  burdens  which  the  war  put 
upon  him  of  representing  the  Commonwealth  in  raising  and  organ- 
izing her  allotment  in  the  armies  which  fought  for  the  Union  were 
very  heavy  ones.  During  the  first  year  of  the  war  there  were  sent 
from  the  Commonwealth  about  forty  thousand  men,  which  was 
nearly  the  average  number  for  the  four  years  of  its  continuance. 
In  raising  and  organizing  these  soldiers  Andrew  was  easily  the 
foremost  agency.  He  was  free  from  some  of  the  cares  which  come 
to  a  Governor  of  the  Commonwealth  in  these  times.  New  Eng- 
land fifty  years  ago  was  almost  self-supporting,  and  produced 
nearly  food  and  fuel  enough  for  her  own  use.  To-day  we  raise  only 
a  small  portion  of  the  food  we  eat,  and  we  consume  in  our  factories 


yohn  Albion  Andrew  359 

and  homes  and  upon  our  railroads  about  twenty  million  tons  of 
coal  each  year  in  Massachusetts  alone.  The  threat  to  the  civil 
population  of  freezing  or  of  starvation  contributes  much  to  the 
anxiety  of  a  Governor,  even  if  his  jurisdiction  is  little  more  than 
a  moral  one,  with  the  privilege  of  making  more  or  less  authoritative 
representations  to  those  in  Washington,  whose  will  has  for  the  time 
taken  the  place  of  natural  and  indeed  of  the  customary  laws. 
According  to  the  reports  that  have  come  down  to  us,  the  execu- 
tive offices  in  Governor  Andrew's  time  were  almost  constantly 
crowded;  and  I  think  very  little  is  ventured  in  saying  that  a  pretty 
large  proportion  of  the  crowd  was  made  up  of  men  who  were  not 
unwilling  to  receive  commissions  in  the  military  or  civil  service. 
He  used  to  welcome  the  throwing  of  a  friendly  rope  that  would 
drag  him  out  of  his  office  and  sometimes  he  would  make  the  neces- 
sary arrangements  himself.  There  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  he 
sent  for  General  Dale  one  morning,  and,  addressing  him  with 
some  excitement,  said:  "If  you  do  not  take  me  out  of  this  State 
House  vi  et  armis  at  one  o'clock  I  will  have  you  court-martialled." 
Dale  agreed  to  do  this,  and  at  one  o'clock  he  came  back,  and  going 
through  the  crowd  in  the  office,  took  Governor  Andrew  by  the 
arm  and  said:  "Come  with  me,  sir."  His  friends  of  the  Saturday 
Club  generously  performed  a  similar  service.  Mr.  John  M.  Forbes 
said  that  of  all  the  services  he  had  tried  to  render  the  country  dur- 
ing the  war,  the  one  he  most  valued  was  the  saving  of  Governor 
Andrew's  life,  as  he  believed.  He  would  go  to  Parker's  and  from 
there  send  a  carriage  with  a  note  to  bring  the  Governor  down  from 
the  State  House  to  the  hotel.  Near  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
Judge  Hoar  wrote  the  following  letter  to  the  Governor  which  is 
printed  in  Pearson's  Life  of  Andrew:  — 

Saturday  afternoon. 
My  dear  Fellow:  — 

I  came  to  seize  you  and  take  you  to  dine  at  our  Club,  where 
we  expect  Motley,  for  your  soul's  salvation  or  body's  at  least. 
Send  that  foolish  Council  away  till  Monday.  A  man  who  has  no 
respect  for  Saturday  afternoon  has  but  one  step  to  take  to  join  in 
abolishing  the  Fourth  of  July.  The  court  having  considered  your 


360  T'he  Saturday  Club 

case  has  adjudged  that  you  come.    If  you  cannot  come  now, 
come  down  an  hour  hence  to  Parker's. 

Yours, 

E.  R.  Hoar. 

It  is  told  of  him  on  very  good  authority  that  at  the  Harvard 
Commencement  in  1863,  he  promptly  went  to  sleep  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  exercises,  and  Colonel  Lee,  a  member  of  his  staff,  gave 
him  a  friendly  nudge  at  the  proper  moment  so  that  he  might 
recognize  the  courtesy  of  the  Latin  Salutatorian,  in  that  part  of 
his  address  which  was  directed  to  the  Governor.  This  friendly  act 
gave  the  Governor  opportunity  to  summon  to  his  countenance 
that  appearance  of  profound  interest  with  which  Latin  speeches 
at  Commencement  are  generally  regarded. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Andrew  should  have  been  chosen  Gover- 
nor after  no  other  official  service  than  that  rendered  in  a  single 
term  in  the  Legislature.  Promotion  like  that  to-day  would  be 
almost  impossible.  Party  custom,  and  especially  party  machin- 
ery, would  prevent  anything  like  that  from  happening.  But  the 
Republican  Party  had  just  been  formed  when  Andrew  went  to 
the  Legislature.  It  was  a  new  popular  party,  with  no  ruling  caste 
in  the  form  of  a  party  machine,  and  it  had  none  of  the  debts  and 
entanglements  that  go  with  a  long  past.  There  was  a  need  for 
capable  leadership,  and  he  had  demonstrated  in  his  brief  service 
that  he  possessed  the  requisite  quality.  He  had  identified  himself 
very  thoroughly  with  the  Anti-Slavery  movement,  and  was  well 
known  throughout  the  State  on  account  of  his  work  in  connection 
with  it.  His  position  as  chairman  of  the  Massachusetts  delegation 
at  the  Chicago  Convention  gave  him  a  new  prominence.  Although 
the  delegation  had  not  at  first  voted  for  Lincoln,  yet  through 
Andrew  as  its  spokesman,  it  was  able  to  cast  the  vote  of  the 
State  for  him  on  the  decisive  ballot.  His  excellent  judgment  of 
men  and  his  freedom  from  intellectual  snobbishness  are  shown  by 
the  opinion  which  he  expressed  of  Lincoln  after  a  trip  to  Spring- 
field made  at  that  time,  and  it  Is  quite  in  contrast  with  the  patron- 
izing attitude  taken  by  some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  East,  and 
especially  of  Massachusetts,  toward  Lincoln  until  nearly  the  end 


yohn  Albion  Andrew  361 

of  the  Civil  War.  Andrew  said  of  him,  "My  eyes  were  never  vis- 
ited with  the  vision  of  a  human  face  in  which  more  transparent 
honesty  and  more  benignant  kindness  were  combined  with  more 
of  the  intellect  and  firmness  which  belong  to  masculine  humanity." 
What  Andrew  saw  in  Lincoln's  face  in  i860  is  what  the  world  sees 
in  it  to-day.  I  know  of  no  other  opinion  so  penetrating  that  was 
given  of  Lincoln  at  that  time. 

In  the  heat  of  war  he  was  so  absorbed  with  his  own  exacting 
work  in  Massachusetts  that  he  did  not  have  the  requisite  breadth 
of  outlook  to  comprehend  the  complex  character  of  Lincoln's  task. 
He  was  also  in  constant  touch  with  very  good  men  who  were 
impatient  over  what  they  thought  was  the  slowness  of  Lincoln 
regarding  emancipation,  and  he  formed  opinions  which  he  prob- 
ably afterwards  changed,  and  which  would  not  be  sanctioned 
to-day.  Just  after  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  had  been 
issued  he  wrote:  "It  is  a  poor  document,  but  a  mighty  act,  slow, 
somewhat  halting,  wrong  in  its  delay  until  January,  but  grand 
and  sublime  after  all."  The  verdict  of  the  next  age  was  that  never 
was  a  great  message  more  splendidly  timed  or  more  simply  and 
fitly  phrased.  Lincoln  had  his  eye  constantly  on  the  "Border 
States"  lying  between  the  extreme  South  and  the  extreme  North. 
Their  help  was  indispensable  in  carrying  on  the  war  for  the  Union, 
and  he  was  careful  not  to  move  faster  than  the  opinion  in  those 
States  would  permit  him  to  move.  When  he  finally  put  forward 
his  proclamation  that  the  men  held  in  bondage  on  the  first  of  the 
following  year  "shall  be  then,  thenceforward,  and  forever  free," 
the  "Border  States"  supported  it  as  a  means  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Union,  and  he  kept  himself  at  the  head  of  all  the  States 
that  favored  union,  whether  they  all  favored  emancipation  or  not. 
When  an  effort  was  made  to  influence  Lincoln  to  withdraw  after 
he  had  been  renominated  for  the  Presidency  in  June,  1864,  Andrew 
wrote  to  Greeley,  "Mr.  Lincoln  ought  to  lead  the  country,  but  he 
is  essentially  lacking  in  the  quality  of  leadership,  which  is  a  gift 
of  God  and  not  a  device  of  man."  Andrew  was  directly  in  the 
shadow  of  great  events  as  they  were  happening.  He  could  not 
survey  the  whole  field,  and  he  was  without  that  perspective  which 
enables  the  whole  world  to-day  to  recognize  the  splendid  quality  of 


3^2  'The  Saturday  Club 

Lincoln's  leadership.  It  was  natural  after  the  prolonged  strain, 
and  after  levy  upon  levy  of  soldiers,  with  victory  still  in  the  dis- 
tance, and  when  an  appeal  was  made  to  the  reserve  endurance  of 
the  people,  as  at  Valley  Forge,  and  as  now  in  Great  Britain  and 
France,  that  there  should  be  criticism  of  Lincoln  in  what  might 
be  termed  the  higher  political  circles,  which  in  time  of  prolonged 
stress  are  almost  always  in  the  wrong.  They  are  apt  to  be  too 
versatile  to  endure  the  steady  grind,  and  cling  in  a  dogged  way  to 
the  straight  path.  But  Andrew's  fault  was  only  impatience,  and 
no  man  stood  more  firmly  for  those  great  causes  which  Lincoln 
represented.  What  he  had  the  vision  to  see  in  Lincoln's  face 
in  i860  was  there  in  even  a  greater  degree  than  he  himself  had 
suspected.  It  was  the  quality  to  which  in  its  breadth  of  view, 
in  its  well-timed  action,  and  in  its  ability  to  comprehend  the  col- 
lective opinion  of  the  whole  people,  the  ultimate  ability  of  the 
national  arms  to  win  both  freedom  and  union  was  greatly  due. 
Andrew  possessed  indomitable  energy,  and  accomplished  marvels 
in  forwarding  the  number  of  troops  the  National  Government 
required  of  Massachusetts.  He  was  inspired  with  a  fervent  zeal  for 
the  cause  of  the  Union,  and  for  emancipation.  It  may  fairly  be 
claimed  for  him  that  he  stood  at  the  head  of  the  War-Governors. 
He  was  a  speaker  of  much  force  and  eloquence,  and  maintained 
a  popularity  with  the  people  which  more  than  compensated  for 
the  opposition  which  often  showed  itself  in  the  Legislature. 
Indeed,  the  Legislature  was  often  antagonistic  to  him.  "Warring- 
ton," the  leading  newspaper  correspondent  of  that  time  writing 
from  Boston,  and  who  wrote  from  the  vantage-ground  of  his  posi- 
tion as  Clerk  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  records  more  than 
one  instance  of  petty  opposition  on  the  part  of  the  Legislature. 
It  refused  to  make  a  small  increase  in  the  salary  of  his  execu- 
tive messenger.  "The  fact,"  says  Warrington,  "that  he  was  the 
Governor's  messenger  did  not  help  the  matter  any.  I  have  never 
yet  known  a  Governor  popular  with  the  Legislature  nor  a  Legisla- 
ture popular  with  the  Governor  after  the  first  year  of  the  guber- 
natorial term."  His  management  of  the  finances  was  attacked, 
and  when  a  large  loan  bill  was  framed,  it  contained  a  clause  that 
the  finance  committee  of  each  branch  of  the  General  Court  should 


yohn  Albion  Andrew  3^3 

have  the  execution  of  the  measure  along  with  the  Governor  and 
Council.  Of  course  Andrew  vetoed  such  a  bill  and  the  General 
Court  was  compelled  to  yield.  Veto  followed  veto,  and  there  was 
an  appearance  of  war  between  the  Executive  and  the  Legislature. 
Peleg  Chandler  said  that  "A  leading  member  of  the  House  and  of 
the  party  in  the  session  of  1862  told  me  that  Governor  Andrew 
ought  never  again  to  be  a  candidate  for  the  office  of  Governor; 
that  his  reelection  was  impossible."  And  that  was  spoken  at  a 
time  when  Andrew  was  by  far  the  most  popular  man  of  his  party 
in  the  State.  It  was  true  then,  as  it  usually  has  been,  that  the 
cloak-room  and  the  lobby  of  the  two  houses  were  the  last  places 
in  which  to  gauge  public  sentiment.  But  Andrew  was  fortunate 
in  his  Council — ^an  institution  which  can  be  of  great  help  to  a 
Governor  at  a  time  like  the  Civil  War;  and  he  numbered  among 
his  Councillors  men  like  Thomas  Talbot,  afterwards  Governor, 
Zenas  Crane,  and  F.  W.  Bird. 

His  membership  in  the  Saturday  Club  was  all  too  brief.  He 
was  not  elected  until  1864,  only  three  years  before  his  death,  but 
he  had  probably  been  the  guest  of  the  Club  on  many  occasions, 
and  he  nowhere  had  more  steadfast  support  than  in  the  circle  of 
its  members.  The  best  opinion  of  his  time  was  wholly  in  his  favour. 
He  had  a  resolute,  fighting  nature  which  showed  itself  at  the  bar, 
and  constantly  while  he  was  Governor,  and  of  which  a  very  good 
instance  was  seen  in  his  collision  with  Jefferson  Davis  when  An- 
drew was  summoned  to  testify  before  a  committee  of  the  Senate 
appointed  to  investigate  the  John  Brown  raid. 

He  had  a  very  genuine  sympathy  for  poor  people  or  for  those 
who  were  the  victims  of  injustice. 

Mr.  James  K.  Hosmer  gives  a  good  picture  of  Andrew  in  the 
Executive  Office,  and  despite  its  length,  what  he  says  is  well  worth 
quoting:  — 

"  Early  in  September,  1 862, 1  went  to  Boston  with  a  deputation  of 
Selectmen  from  four  towns  of  the  Connecticut  Valley.  They  had 
an  errand,  and  my  function  was,  as  an  acquaintance  of  the  Gov- 
ernor, to  introduce  them.  .  .  .  Our  errand  was  to  ask  that  in  a  regi- 
ment about  to  be  raised  in  two  western  counties  the  men  might 
have  the  privilege  of  electing  the  officers,  a  pernicious  practice 


3^4  T^he  Saturday  Club 

which  had  been  in  vogue,  and  always  done  much  harm.  But  in 
those  days  our  eyes  were  not  open.  Entering  the  Governor's 
room  in  the  State  House  with  my  farmer  Selectmen,  I  found  it 
densely  thronged.  Among  the  civilians  were  many  uniforms,  and 
men  of  note,  in  the  field  and  out,  stood  there  waiting.  Charles 
Sumner  presently  entered  the  room,  dominating  the  company  by 
his  commanding  presence,  that  day  apparently  in  full  vigour,  alert, 
forceful,  with  a  step  before  which  the  crowd  gave  way,  his  master- 
fulness fully  recognized  and  acknowledged.  He  took  his  seat  with 
the  air  of  a  prince  of  the  blood  at  the  table,  close  at  hand  to  the 
Chief  Magistrate.  Naturally  abashed,  but  feeling  I  was  in  for  a 
task  which  must  be  pushed  through,  I  made  my  way  to  the  other 
elbow  of  the  Governor,  who,  looking  up  from  his  documents,  rec- 
ognized me  politely  and  asked  what  I  wanted.  I  stated  our  case, 
that  a  deputation  from  Franklin  and  Hampshire  Counties  desired 
the  privilege  for  the  men  of  the  new  regiment  about  to  be  raised 
to  elect  their  own  officers,  and  not  be  commanded  by  men  whom 
they  did  not  know.  *  Where  are  your  Selectmen.^'  said  Governor 
Andrew,  rising  and  pushing  back  his  chair  with  an  energy  which 
I  thought  ominous.  My  companions  had  taken  up  a  modest 
position  in  a  far  corner.  When  I  pointed  them  out,  the  Governor 
made  no  pause,  but  proceeded  to  pour  upon  them  and  me  a  tor- 
rent of  impassioned  words.  He  said  that  we  were  making  trouble, 
that  the  Country  was  in  peril,  and  that  while  he  was  trying  to 
send  every  available  man  to  the  front  in  condition  to  do  effective 
work,  he  was  embarrassed  at  home  by  petty  interference  with  his 
efforts.  '  I  have  at  hand  soldiers  who  have  proved  themselves  brave 
in  action,  have  been  baptized  in  blood  and  fire.  They  are  fit 
through  character  and  experience  to  be  leaders,  and  yet  I  cannot 
give  them  commissions  because  I  am  blocked  by  this  small  and 
unworthy  spirit  of  hindrance.'  For  some  minutes  the  warm  out- 
burst went  on.  The  white,  beardless  face  flushed  up  under  the 
curls,  and  his  hands  waved  in  rapid  gesture.  'A  capital  speech, 
your  Excellency,' cried  out  Sumner,  'a  most  capital  speech!'  and 
he  led  the  way  in  a  peal  of  applause  in  which  the  crowd  in  the 
chamber  universally  joined,  and  which  must  have  rung  across 
Beacon  Street  to  the  Common  far  away.    My  feeble  finger  had 


yohn  Albion  Andrew  z^s 

touched  the  button  which  brought  this  unexpected  downpour, 
and  for  the  moment  I  was  unpleasantly  in  the  limelight.  'Now  in- 
troduce me  to  your  Selectmen,'  said  Governor  Andrew,  stepping 
to  my  side,  I  led  the  way  to  the  corner  to  which  the  delegation  had 
retreated,  and  presented  my  friends  in  turn.  His  manner  changed. 
He  was  polite  and  friendly,  and  when,  after  a  handshaking,  he 
went  back  to  his  table,  we  felt  we  had  not  understood  the  situation 
and  that  our  petition  should  have  been  withheld.  For  my  part  I 
enlisted  at  once  as  a  private  and  went  into  a  strenuous  campaign." 
But  no  more  fitting  and  no  juster  estimate  of  him  has  been 
uttered,  so  far  as  I  know,  than  that  given  by  one  of  the  voices  of 
the  Saturday  Club  —  one  of  the  voices  to  which  all  that  is  best 
in  the  country  will  always  delight  to  listen:  "To  you  more  than 
to  any  other  man,"  Charles  Eliot  Norton  wrote  to  Andrew  in 
1866,  "is  due  the  fact  that  through  these  years  of  trial  Massachu- 
setts has  kept  her  old  place  of  leadership.  Through  you  she  has 
given  proof  of  her  constancy  to  those  principles  to  which  she  was 
from  the  beginning  devoted.  You  have  helped  her  to  be  true  to 
her  ideal.  You  have  represented  all  that  is  best  In  her  spirit  and 
her  aims.  There  are  no  better  years  in  her  history  than  those  with 
which  your  name  will  be  forever  associated  in  honour." 

S.  W.  McC. 


MARTIN  BRIMMER 

Perhaps  the  most  significant  triumph  of  mind  over  matter  is 
when  an  indomitable  and  beautiful  spirit  overcoming  the  diffi- 
culties of  an  imperfect  body  becomes  a  power  for  good.  The  frail 
vessel  richly  laden  weathered  the  gales  and  steered  clear  of  the 
reefs  on  which  many  another  barque  had  come  to  grief,  and  ar- 
rived safely  and  triumphantly  in  port. 

Martin  Brimmer,  the  fourth  to  bear  that  name  through  an 
honoured  life,  was  born  in  Boston,  December  9, 1829.  Had  he,  like 
Marcus  Aurelius,  examined  himself  and  his  ancestors  to  see  from 
whom  his  characteristics  came,  perhaps  he  would  have  found, 
among  other  things,  that  his  public  spirit  came  from  his  father  and 
his  maternal  grandfather,  both  of  them  eminent  philanthropists; 
that  his  ability  to  bear  a  creditable  part  in  the  political  life  of  his 
day  was  inherited  from  his  father,  at  one  time  Mayor  of  Boston; 
and  in  regard  to  his  great-grandfather,  who  emigrated  from  Osten, 
near  Hamburg,  to  America  about  1723,  his  great-grandmother,  a 
French  Huguenot  named  Sigourney,  and  his  grandmother  Sarah 
Watson,  of  Plymouth,  that,  as  Mr.  George  S.  Hale  said  in  his 
memoir,  "The  quiet  reserve  and  solidity  of  his  German  ancestor 
were  enlivened  and  made  attractive  by  the  gracious  elegance  of 
manner  derived  from  his  French  descent;  his  Pilgrim  origin  dis- 
closed itself  in  a  New  England  conscience,  tempered  by  a  cheer- 
ful Huguenot  faith." 

Martin  Brimmer's  mother  died  when  he  was  three  years  old. 
He  was  a  delicate  boy  suffering  from  a  club-foot.  His  health  was 
so  frail  that  sending  him  to  school  was  out  of  the  question,  and 
he  was  educated  by  tutors.  His  father  was  a  rich  man,  and  his 
mother's  father,  Mr.  James  Wadsworth,  owned  a  vast  estate  at 
Geneseo,  New  York,  where  the  boy  used  to  visit  his  grandfather, 
and  where  his  love  of  nature  grew. 

He  entered  Harvard  College  at  the  age  of  sixteen  and  became 
a  member  of  the  class  of  1849,  then  in  its  Sophomore  year.  He 
led  his  class  in  Latin  and  Greek,  took  many  prizes,  and  at  grad- 


Martin  Brimmer  367 

uation  received  highest  honours.  He  was  one  of  the  leading  spirits 
in  his  class,  though  on  account  of  his  lameness  he  was  obliged  to 
forego  the  pleasures  of  athletic  games.  He  travelled  in  Europe, 
then  returned  to  the  Harvard  Law  School,  and  was  admitted  to 
the  bar.  At  about  this  time  he  worked  for  a  while  in  a  law  office 
in  Boston.  Mr.  Samuel  Eliot  wrote,  "His  fellow-student  in  the 
office  says  that  on  a  good-natured  remonstrance  as  to  the  late- 
ness of  his  appearance,  he  replied,  *You  don't  know  my  hours; 
they  begin  at  twelve  and  end  at  five  minutes  after  twelve.' "  Soon 
after  he  went  to  Europe  again,  where  he  found  a  field  of  study  that 
was  more  congenial  in  the  form  of  art.  The  anecdote  above  quoted 
is  not  characteristic  of  his  general  attitude  toward  work.  It  merely 
means  that  the  law  was  not  for  him.  He  was  a  hard  worker  all  his 
life. 

At  the  age  of  about  twenty-six,  in  1855  or  1856,  he  went  on  a 
chivalrous  expedition  to  Kansas  on  behalf  of  the  New  England 
Emigrant  Aid  Society,  "which  played  no  unimportant  part  in 
rescuing  from  slavery  the  Territory  of  Kansas  at  the  time  that 
the  Missouri  River  was  closed  by  the  border  ruffians  to  the  emi- 
grants from  the  other  States."  He  accompanied  the  Director 
of  the  Society  to  inspect  and  to  care  for  the  needs  of  the  patri- 
otic settlers  in  that  region.  He  himself  was  a  contributor  to,  but 
not  an  officer  of,  the  Society.  They  travelled  on  horseback  with 
an  old  army  ambulance,  probably  for  the  camping  equipment; 
sometimes  "  slept  in  strange  beds,  ate  strange  meals,  and  encoun- 
tered strange  companions."  Mr.  Brimmer  was  described  by  his 
fellow-traveller  as  "never  complaining,  never  over-excited  or  over- 
depressed,  a  delightful  companion,  with  fairness,  cheerfulness, 
unselfishness,  and  quickness  of  apprehension.  'The  only  time,' 
the  Director  writes,  'Brimmer  referred  to  his  lameness,  was  on 
our  returning  at  night  from  a  visit,  when,  having  a  ravine  and  a 
brook  to  cross,  he  said  that  a  very  thick-soled  shoe  was  sometimes 
useful  in  keeping  one's  foot  dry.'" 

In  1855,  he  was  married  to  Miss  Mary  Ann  Timmlns,  of  Bos- 
ton. Their  domestic  life  was  quite  unusually  happy,  though  they 
never  had  children.  Mr.  Chapman  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  Mrs. 
Brimmer  in  his  sketch  of  her  husband.   Mr.  Brimmer  would  fain 


3^8  T^he  Saturday  Club 

have  gone  to  the  war  had  he  not  been  unfit  for  mlHtary  service 
on  account  of  his  lameness.  But  he  did  enter  politics  for  a  while. 
In  1889,  he  was  elected  to  the  Massachusetts  House  of  Representa- 
tives as  a  Republican,  and  was  reelected  more  than  once;  and  in 
1864,  was  elected  to  the  Senate.  He  was  a  competent  and  effective 
member  of  the  Legislature  and  faithfully  performed  his  duties. 
Mr.  George  S.  Hale  says:  "I  think  his  name  will  be  found  among 
the  yeas  and  nays  on  every  roll-call.  There  never  could  arrive  an 
occasion  when  he  did  not  have  the  courage  of  his  convictions. 
I  think  he  did  not  know  how  to  dodge."  Mr.  Hale  believes  that 
he  bore  an  important  part  in  carrying  through  the  measure  that 
made  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  possible. 

After  he  felt  that  he  had  done  his  duty  by  the  Commonwealth 
In  political  life,  he  turned  to  the  fields  of  art,  education,  and  phi- 
lanthropy, which  were  much  more  congenial.  Only  once  again 
was  he  tempted  into  the  lists.  Leopold  Morse  was  running  for 
Congress  in  1876;  and  a  number  of  public-spirited  men  succeeded 
in  inducing  Mr.  Brimmer  to  run  against  him.  Mr.  Morse  won, 
and  Mr.  Brimmer  was  never  again  persuaded  to  run  for  a  political 
office. 

In  1869  began  the  chief  work  of  his  life.  He  helped  in  drawing 
up  the  plan  for  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  and  presided  at  the 
first  meeting.  In  the  spring  of  1870,  he  became  the  first  president, 
and  held  this  office  for  more  than  twenty-five  years.  To  his  de- 
votion, Intelligence,  and  generosity  the  Museum  will  always  owe 
a  great  debt. 

The  other  great  Institution  with  which  Mr.  Brimmer's  name  is 
associated  is  Harvard  College.  "In  1864  when  he  was  only 
thirty-four  years  old,"  he  became  a  Fellow.  "The  majority  of  the 
members  of  the  Corporation  at  this  time  had  graduated  before  he 
was  born.  He  was  a  Fellow  of  the  University  Corporation  from 
1864  to  1868,  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Overseers  from  1870  to 
1877,  and  again  a  Fellow  of  the  Corporation  from  1877  to  his 
death." 

He  was  actively  connected  with  many  other  public  works  in 
Boston,  such  as  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  the  Provi- 
dent Association,  the  Farm  School,  the  Perkins  Institution  for  the 


Martin  Brimmer  3^9 

Blind,  the  Cooperative  Building  Association,  and  many  others. 
He  was  a  vestryman  of  Trinity  Church  and  a  close  friend  of 
Phillips  Brooks,  whom  he  earnestly  advocated  for  the  position  of 
Bishop  of  Massachusetts. 

Mr.  Brimmer  wrote  well.  His  book  on  the  History,  Religion, 
and  Art  of  Egypt  is  charming.  Though  he  made  no  pretence  of 
being  a  profound  scholar,  and  said  he  wrote  his  book  with  the  help 
of  his  niece  [as  amanuensis]  during  a  journey  in  Egypt,  merely 
"for  their  own  instruction,"  as  he  put  it,  and  with  no  intention 
of  publication,  yet  the  little  volume  is  not  only  readable  and 
delightful,  but  is  of  real  value  as  giving  in  brief  and  vivid  form  a 
picture  of  what  we  owe  to  ancient  Egypt.  In  later  years  he  was 
persuaded  to  publish  the  volume,  which  appeared  in  beautiful 
form.  Mr.  Brimmer  also  made  two  thoughtful  addresses  presently 
to  be  referred  to. 

He  was  chosen  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club  in  1864.  He 
enjoyed  the  meetings  and  attended  them  frequently. 

In  the  winter  of  1893,  he  had  a  heavy  fall  and  remained  uncon- 
scious for  several  hours.  He  was  never  quite  so  strong  again. 
On  January  14,  1896,  he  died  quietly  at  his  home  on  Beacon  Street. 

These  bare  facts  alone  would  fail  to  give  a  just  impression  of  his 
peculiar  characteristics  as  a  man.  We  happily  have  the  recorded 
memories  of  him  by  men  who  had  the  privilege  of  knowing  him  well. 

As  Mr.  Brimmer  was  a  leader  in  the  foundation  of  one  of  the 
first  and  greatest  museums  in  America,  his  thought  on  museums 
is  interesting  as  showing  his  ''^ credoT  In  the  Wellesley  address,* 
in  1889,  he  "shows  the  importance  of  studies  in  art,  and  unfolds 
the  causes  which  promote  the  arts";  and  in  his  Bowdoin  address* 
of  1894,  "the  governing  thoughts  are  that  art  is  a  language,  that 
it  is  addressed  to  us,  and  that,  if  we  do  not  respond,  the  language 
has  failed  by  our  fault."  In  the  same  line  of  thought  he  once  wrote 
to  a  friend,  "Museums  and  libraries  do  something  for  those  who 
are  reaching  out;  they  do  not  of  themselves  reach  in."  And  again, 
"  I  have  been  reading  a  little  of  Green^  and  have  increased  appetite 

*  At  the  opening  of  the  Farnsworth  Art  School  at  Wellesley. 

*  At  the  opening  of  the  Art  Museum  of  Bowdoin  College  in  X894. 

'  Thomas  Hill  Green,  author  of  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  and  Lectures  on  the  Principles  0} 
Political  Obligation. 


37^  The  Saturday  Club 

for  more.  Is  not  this  condensed  truth  the  lesson  which  man  learns 
from  external  nature :  he  finds  that  it  is  only  what  he  gives  to  it  that 
he  receives  from  it,  yet  by  some  mysterious  affinity  it  evokes  what 
he  has  to  give,  and  then  it  bears  witness  with  his  own  spirit  that 
what  he  gives  is  not  his  own,  but  inspired  from  above?" 

Mr.  Brimmer,  in  his  article  in  the  American  Architect  and  Build- 
ing News  J  October  30,  1880,  on  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  Boston, 
speaks  of  the  history  of  the  foundation  of  the  Museum.  He  de- 
fines what  he  thinks  should  be  its  general  aims.  The  catholicity  of 
his  taste  is  shown  by  these  words:  "The  museums  of  to-day  open 
their  doors  to  all  the  world,  and  the  scope  of  their  collections  has 
broadened  to  meet  the  public  needs.  None  the  less,  however,  are 
the  best  pictures  and  marbles  their  prizes.  ...  If  modern  criticism 
has  proved  anything,  it  has  proved  that  an  artist's  work  can  be 
well  understood  only  through  a  knowledge  of  the  artist's  surround- 
ings. The  influence  of  his  masters,  the  influence  of  his  contempo- 
raries, throw  a  great  light  upon  his  achievement.  Hence,  the  need 
of  a  selection  in  which  the  historical  sequence  shall  be  borne  in 
mind,  in  which  the  picture  or  the  statue  shall  stand,  not  for  itself 
alone,  but  for  the  time  and  the  influence  which  it  represents. 
Judgments  of  intrinsic  merit,  too,  though  they  be  the  main  tests  of 
value,  are  nowhere  infallible.  They  vary  somewhat  with  individual 
tastes;  they  vary  more  with  the  shifting  tendencies  of  the  time. 
The  critic  of  forty  years  ago  did  not  clearly  foresee  the  standards 
of  this  generation,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  judgments  of  the 
critics  of  to-day  may  be  passed  by  somewhat  slightingly  by  his 
successor  forty  years  hence."  He  urges  the  duty  of  the  Museum  to 
represent  the  local  artists,  Copley,  Stuart,  Allston,  Hunt,  and 
others. 

He  himself  was  a  great  admirer  of  Jean  Francois  Millet.  Mr. 
William  Hunt,  after  visiting  Millet  at  Barbizon  and  becoming  in- 
terested in  his  work,  showed  it  to  Mr.  Brimmer,  who  bought  the 
"Sheep  Shearers,"  to  Millet's  great  relief  and  encouragement.  In 
later  years  in  his  Wellesley  address  he  paid  an  eloquent  tribute  to 
Millet. 

In  this  address  Mr.  Brimmer  says:  "So  accustomed  have  men 
become  to  books  as  the  storehouses  of  facts  and  ideas,  so  limited 


Martin  Brimmer  371 

are  we  to  the  use  of  words  as  the  only  vehicle  of  thought,  that 
we  have  lost  touch  with  the  earlier  and  more  natural  mode  of 
expression  by  Images."  And  again:  "The  parallel  of  ugliness  with 
vice,  and  of  beauty  with  holiness,  will  be  more  largely  understood 
among  all  kinds  and  conditions  of  men."  He  further  asks  the  ques- 
tion: "Why,  after  all,  is  art  worth  while.?"  He  replies  that  not  only 
do  we  Increase  our  possibilities  by  cultivating  our  taste  and  our 
sense  of  beauty,  but  that  deeper  Issues  are  Involved;  he  says  that 
we  have  only  to  placeourselves  before  one  of  the  greatest  master- 
pieces of  the  world  and  "we  shall  feel  that  something  within  us 
is  touched  which  makes  cultivation  of  taste  and  skill  seem  but 
mere  playing  with  the  surface  of  things.  And  when,  led  on  from 
one  great  work  to  another,  we  begin  to  discover  their  relation  to 
each  other,  and  to  life  In  the  midst  of  which  they  were  produced, 
then  the  narrow  bounds  we  have  set  up  fall  away,  and  a  wide 
horizon  opens  around  us  on  every  side.  We  see  that  style  and 
execution  and  design  are  but  the  foreground  of  the  scene  before 
us,  are  but  the  way  through  which  the  mental  vision  reaches 
out  to  great  ends.  We  see  that  Art,  In  its  widest  and  truest 
sense,  is  not  mere  luxury  or  decoration,  but  an  expression  of  the 
hopes,  the  faith,  the  life  of  mankind.  Through  visible  images 
our  eyes  penetrate  to  the  Inner  thoughts  of  men  of  distant  races 
and  remote  periods.  We  contemplate  the  ideas  that  filled  their 
minds,  the  feelings  that  Impelled  them,  the  aspirations  in  which 
they  found  support.  We  trace  the  Instincts  of  race,  the  rise  and 
fall  of  national  spirit,  the  growth  and  decay  of  religions  that  have 
passed  away.  We  behold  the  Ideals  of  beauty  in  every  age  and  na- 
tion as  they  came  forth  from  the  hand  of  those  men  who  expressed 
them  best.  We  follow  the  contending  influences  which  led  men 
now  this  way,  now  that,  and  we  mark  the  impress  which  the  man 
of  genius  stamped  upon  his  time.  The  merest  glance  over  the 
field  is  enough  to  assure  us  that  the  end  of  the  study  of  Art  is  the 
knowledge  of  humanity  Itself  on  a  side  not  less  Instructive  or  in- 
spiring than  we  find  In  the  study  of  literature  or  of  history."  j 
In  these  days  when  every  one  is  too  busy  to  sit  still,  and  most 
people  are  too  busy  to  think  about  anything  that  does  not  im- 
mediately concern  their  actual  day's  work,  a  glimpse  of  Mr. 


37^  T^he  Saturday  Club 

Brimmer's  social  life  given  by  a  friend,^  comes  like  a  fresh  breath 
from  across  the  waters,  bringing  suggestive  odours  which  tell  of 
other  days:  "With  his  marriage  to  a  dear  friend  my  friendship 
with  Mr.  Brimmer  soon  deepened  into  intimacy;  and  as  my  mind 
goes  back  to  those  early  days,  what  memories  I  recall  of  that 
delightful  time!  Once  more  I  am  seated  at  the  ever-hospitable 
board  on  Beacon  Street,  with  the  bright  circle  that  was  wont  to 
gather  there,  or  on  the  piazzas  at  Beverly,  and  among  the  ferns 
and  rocks  and  pine-needles  of  Witch  Wood,  we  once  more  talk 
with  youthful  freshness  of  all  that  most  interests  our  minds  or  is 
dearest  to  our  hearts !  At  Beverly,  as  in  Boston,  rare  spirits  would 
often  gather  —  Tom  Appleton,  Frank  Parkman,  William  Hunt, 
Frank  Parker,  and  others;  and  le  causeur  des  Lundis^  Sainte-Beuve 
himself,  might  sometimes  have  envied  those  long,  inspiring  talks, 
with  the  pine  trees  whispering  overhead  and  the  surge  of  the  sum- 
mer sea  not  far  away!  And  then  in  the  autumn  evenings  what  mo- 
ments were  those  when  Mr.  Brimmer  would  read  aloud,  to  a  chosen 
few,  some  page  from  Shakspeare,  or  Dante,  or  Sainte-Beuve,  or 
Musset,  his  beautiful  voice  and  rhythmical  cadence  adding  a 
musical  charm  to  the  'winged  words'!  This  reminds  me  of  our 
long  dispute  —  the  only  one  —  over  Music  itself,  Mr.  Brimmer 
declaring  that  he  was  indifferent  to  it;  in  fact,  he  would  laugh- 
ingly add,  'It  almost  amounts  at  times  to  a  dislike';  I  always 
contending  that  the  rhythm  and  the  cadence  of  his  reading  dis- 
proved his  statement.  Years  afterward,  when  he  confessed  his 
delight  in  Wagner,  and  I  instantly  proclaimed  my  victory  in  our 
long  dispute,  he  answered  that  the  trouble  had  not  been  with  his 
musical  taste,  but  with  the  inferiority  of  all  musical  composi- 
tion up  to  Wagner's  time!" 

Mr.  Samuel  Eliot  describes  his  hospitality  thus:  "He  was  dis- 
tinguished as  a  host.  Nowhere  in  our  neighbourhood  were  stran- 
gers more  generously  or  more  gracefully  entertained.  As  a  host 
he  shone  by  his  simplicity,  as  well  as  by  his  power  to  converse 
with  every  guest  within  his  doors."  He  was  a  delightful  fellow- 
traveller  also.  "Intercourse  with  him  was  the  more  attractive 
because  of  the  impression  that  beneath  the  quiet  surface  there 

^  Mr.  John  Jay  Chapman  in  his  Memories  and  Milestones. 


Martin  Brimmer  373 

was  untold  depth."  Some  one  speaks  of  him  as  a  modern  Mae- 
cenas. 

Mr.  John  Jay  Chapman,  who  married  Mr.  Brimmer's  niece, 
gives  the  following  picture:  "He  was  the  best  of  old  Boston;  for  he 
was  not  quite  inside  the  Puritan  tradition  and  was  a  little  sweeter 
by  nature  and  less  sure  he  was  right  than  the  true  Bostonian  is. 
He  was  a  lame,  frail  man,  with  fortune  and  position;  and  one  felt 
that  he  had  been  a  lame,  frail  boy,  lonely,  cultivated,  and  nursing 
an  ideal  of  romantic  honour.  There  was  a  knightly  glance  In  his 
eye  and  a  seriousness  in  his  deep  voice  that  told  of  his  living,  and 
of  his  having  lived  always,  in  a  little  Camelot  of  his  own.  He 
was  not  quixotic,  but  he  was  independent.  There  were  portcullises 
and  moats  and  flowered  gardens  around  him.  He  was  humble  with 
a  kind  of  Hidalgo  humility  —  the  humility  of  a  magnificent  im- 
poverished Portuguese  Duke.  There  was  nothing  sanctimonious 
about  his  mind,  and  this  is  what  really  distinguished  him  from  the 
adjacent  Bostonian  nobility." 

Contrasting  him  with  the  conservative  Bostonians  of  Puritan 
descent,  Mr.  Chapman  continues:  — 

"There  was  in  Mr.  Brimmer  nothing  of  that  austere  look  which 
comes  from  holding  on  to  property  and  standing  pat.  And  besides 
this  he  was  warm;  not,  perhaps,  quite  as  warm  as  the  Tropics, 
but  very  much  warmer  than  the  average  Beacon  Street  mantel- 
pieces were.  He  would  discourse  and  laugh  heartily  about  these 
mantel-pieces  —  instead  of  turning  haughty,  and  assuming  a 
looked  of  profaned  intimacy,  if  any  one  noticed  the  absence  of 
fire  in  them.  There  was  a  spark  of  fight,  too,  in  Mr.  Brimmer; 
as  I  found  to  my  cost  once,  when  I  received  a  letter  from  him  be- 
ginning, 'Sir,'  in  the  old  duelling  style,  and  more  beautiful  in 
its  chirography  than  anything  a  merely  democratic  age  can  pro- 
duce. .  .  .  Mr.  Brimmer's  cultivation  was,  as  has  been  seen,  not 
of  the  Bostonian  brand.  He  had  no  pose  of  any  kind,  no  ambition. 
His  cultivation  was  unconscious. 

*'He  was  as  much  at  home  with  a  Turk  as  with  an  Englishman, 
and  had  the  natural  gravity  which  marks  the  Asiatic.  He  could, 
upon  occasion,  be  severe  and  masterful;  and  at  such  times  his  thin 
jaw  would  protrude  beneath  his  falling  moustache.   In  that  age  the 


374  The  Saturday  Club 

wandering  Englishman  of  fashion  was  apt  to  drop  in  upon  an 
American  dinner  party  in  his  travelling  jacket.  One  such  offender 
Mr.  Brimmer  caused  to  ascend  in  the  elevator  to  become  arrayed 
in  a  suit  from  the  antique  and  honourable  wardrobe  of  the  house, 
before  being  admitted  to  the  feast.  I  am  sure  that  the  host  spoke 
with  the  sweetness  of  King  Arthur  and  Galahad  in  making  the 
suggestion  to  the  stranger. 

"Mr.  Brimmer's  most  powerful  quality  was  his  patience.  He 
could  endure  and  go  on  enduring  almost  to  eternity.  To  a  man  of 
his  delicate  physique  and  inner  sensitiveness,  the  jolting  of  life 
must  ever  have  been  painful;  and  he  seemed  often  to  be  in  pain; 
but  whether  it  was  physical  pain  or  mental  pain  was  hard  to 
guess.  Of  all  the  virtues,  the  virtue  patience  is  most  foreign  to 
youth:  his  power  of  patience  impressed  me  and  awed  me. 

"...  The  Brimmers  had  no  children;  but  their  household,  and 
indeed  the  whole  little  kingdom  that  went  with  it,  was  greatly 
warmed  and  caused  to  glow  by  the  presence  of  the  two  Italian 
nieces.  .  .  .  These  two  girls,  then,  who  looked  like  figures  out  of 
the  Vita  Nuova,  brought  with  them  from  Italy  the  daring  of  a  coun- 
try where  a  woman  is  as  good  as  a  man,  while  they  inherited  in 
their  own  natures  and  from  their  American  ancestors  a  sort  of 
Anglo-Saxon  piety.  .  .  .  These  young  girls  hung  garlands  about 
the  declining  years  of  their  aunt  and  uncle,  being  as  devoted  as 
daughters  could  have  been." 

Several  of  those  who  knew  Mr.  Brimmer  bear  witness  to  the 
clearness  of  his  intelligence  and  the  sensitiveness  of  his  instincts, 
which  made  him  a  particularly  valuable  man  as  the  presiding 
officer  at  a  meeting.  He  understood  more  quickly  than  others  the 
elements  of  a  situation,  and  hence  was  able  to  be  the  controlling 
force.  The  description  might  be  applied  to  Mr.  Brimmer  which 
John  Hay  gave  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  when  he  said  that  he  "could 
see  around  the  corner  while  the  rest  were  looking  down  the  street.'* 

Mr.  Brimmer  was  a  warm  friend  of  Governor  Andrew  and  of 
many  of  the  most  distinguished  men  in  Boston.  The  number  of 
eloquent  tributes  to  him  after  his  death,  which  evidently  came 
from  the  heart,  bear  witness  to  his  place  in  the  community. 

President  Eliot,  who  knew  him  so  well,  said:  "In  spite  of  his 


Martin  Brimmer  375 

delicacy  of  body,  no  comrade  of  his  youth,  and  no  witness  of  his 
maturer  life,  ever  accused  Martin  Brimmer  of  lack  of  courage, 
decision,  or  persistence.  He  was  always  gentle,  but  always  firm." 
He  "was  as  brave  and  resolute  as  he  was  gentle;  a  man  who, 
living,  illustrated  all  the  virtues  and  graces  of  friend,  husband, 
counsellor,  citizen,  and  public  servant,  and,  dying,  left  behind 
him  no  memory  of  look,  thought,  or  deed  that  is  not  fragrant  and 
blessed." 

Mr.  Hale  spoke  of  the  cloudless  serenity  of  Mr.  Brimmer's 
nature;  and  of  his  poise  and  balance  which  were  so  perfect  that 
in  a  measure  they  concealed  his  size;  "In  Johnsonian  phrase, 
'Because  we  miss  the  nodosity  of  a  Hercules  we  do  not  see  the 
vigour  of  an  Apollo.'  ...  In  this  rare  combination  of  qualities 
lay  the  secret  of  his  influence  —  an  influence  that  followed  him 
into  every  circle  that  he  entered,  whether  public  or  private;  and 
even  in  these  enfranchised  days,  when  the  voice  of  authority 
seems  dead,  Mr.  Brimmer's  voice  was  listened  to  and  his  opinions 
accepted  as  no  one  else's  I  have  ever  known.  And  yet  I  greatly 
doubt  if  he  ever  willingly  proffered  his  advice  to  any  one;  but  with 
what  modesty,  what  diffidence  it  was  given  when  asked  for!  —  and 
asked  for  it  was  by  the  highest  and  the  humblest,  each  one  feeling 
that  they  had  in  him  a  friend.  Truly  Le  monde  est  aux  gens  calmes  !  " 

In  an  anonymous  editorial  in  the  Transcript  occurs  this  pas- 
sage: "Phillips  Brooks  in  one  of  his  eloquent  passages  drew  a 
splendid  distinction  between  works  of  creation  and  those  of  de- 
struction, pointing  out  the  essential  quietness  of  one  and  noise 
of  the  other,  and  showing  how  the  destroyer  inevitably  held  at- 
tention to  himself  by  his  methods,  while  the  creator  laboured  in 
silence  till  his  work  was  done,  when  it  spoke  for  itself.  It  was  to 
this  class  that  Mr.  Brimmer  preeminently  belonged." 

Rev.  E.  Winchester  Donald  thus  ended  the  memorial  sermon 
in  which  he  had  not  previously  mentioned  his  name,  "With  you 
I  join  in  thanking  God  for  the  good  example  of  that  gentle  spirit, 
that  strong  character,  that  noble  unselfishness,  that  rare  refine- 
ment, which,  for  threescore  and  six  years,  shone  undimmed  in 
the  life  of  God's  soldier,  servant,  saint  —  Martin  Brimmer." 

E.  W.  F. 


JAMES  THOMAS  FIELDS 

The  book  in  which  the  overflowing  personality  of  James  T. 
Fields  is  communicated  most  abundantly  to  a  later  generation, 
his  Yesterdays  zvith  Authors,  contains  this  dedication:  "Inscribed 
to  my  fellow-members  of  the  Saturday  Club."  For  the  present 
purpose  these  words  are  taken  from  a  copy  of  the  twenty-fourth 
edition  of  the  book,  dated  1883;  it  was  first  published  in  1871.  As 
editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  from  186 1  to  1871,  as  a  public  lec- 
turer of  extreme  popularity,  most  of  all  as  a  publisher  who  com- 
bined in  a  rare  measure  the  relations  of  business  and  of  friendship 
with  the  authors  for  whom  he  acted  —  that  galaxy  of  men  of 
letters  who  made  the  Victorian  period  what  it  was  in  America 
as  notably  as  in  England  —  Fields  was  himself  one  of  the  con- 
spicuous figures  of  his  time.  His  several  small  volumes  of  verse 
do  not  reveal  him  as  a  creative  writer  of  the  first  order.  One  of 
his  homely  lyrics,  the  "Ballad  of  the  Tempest,"  has  proved  a 
hardy  survivor  from  all  his  metrical  pages,  and  therefore  may  be 
taken  to  represent  the  verdict  of  his  countrymen  upon  his  poetry. 
It  is  a  verdict  by  no  means  wholly  just,  for  in  many  another  lyric 
and  "occasional  poem"  he  struck,  with  much  facility,  and  often 
with  felicity,  a  note  that  was  highly  popular  in  the  central  dec- 
ades of  the  past  century.  His  lectures  and  books  which  grew  out 
of  his  personal  relations  with  his  contemporaries  who  still  live 
in  their  writings  were  his  more  important  contribution  to  the 
records  of  his  period.  But  what  counted  for  still  more  was  the  very 
fact  of  these  relationships  —  a  fact  which  found  expression  in  the 
dedication  of  his  principal  work  to  his  "fellow-members  of  the 
Saturday  Club." 

His  name  stands  fourteenth  on  the  list  of  those  elected  after  the 
fourteen  "members  before  1857,"  the  year  of  his  election  being 
1864.  He  was  then  forty-eight  years  old.  Portsmouth,  New 
Hampshire,  was  his  birthplace;  December  31,  18 16,  the  date  of 
his  birth.  His  Portsmouth  boyhood,  passed  under  the  influences 
of  a  devoted  mother,  a  shipmaster's  widow,  of  excellent  teachers, 


yames  Thomas  Fields  Zll 

both  secular  and  religious,  of  spirited  playmates,  and  of  all  the 
books  which  the  local  Athenaeum  and  private  shelves  could  afford, 
ended  when  he  was  fourteen.  At  that  age  he  received  the  follow- 
ing letter,  which  opened  for  him  the  doors  of  the  "Old  Corner 
Bookstore"  in  Boston:  — 

Brookline,  March  4,  183 1. 

I  have  procured  you  a  place,  James,  in  Carter  &  Hendee's 
Bookstore.  I  consider  this  the  best  situation  in  Boston  in  this 
line  of  business.  Mr.  Carter  says  that  a  boy,  who  is  good,  active, 
and  industrious,  and  desirous  of  giving  satisfaction  to  his  em- 
ployers, may  be  sure  of  getting  forward,  and  of  doing  well  in 
this  business  when  he  comes  of  age. 

If  you  like  the  trade  and  are  pleased  with  the  place,  you  can 

come  as  soon  as  your  mother  pleases.   The  gentlemen  with  whom 

you  are  to  live  are  excellent  young  men,  and  very  much  respected 

in  Boston.    They  do  a  great  deal  of  business,  and  you  must  do 

your  best  to  please  them,  and  if  you  succeed  in  this  you  will  be 

amply  rewarded  in  their  friendship.     You  will  go,  at  first,  on 

trial. 

Very  truly,  your  friend, 

Rich.  Sullivan. 
Master  James  Fields. 

This  letter  served  as  an  Introduction  to  far  more  than  a  "  place  " 
in  a  bookstore.  It  could  have  done  no  more  than  that  but  for  the 
remarkable  capacity  of  young  Fields  to  turn  his  opportunities 
to  the  best  account.  Some  reminiscences  of  him  by  Edwin  P. 
Whipple  in  these  earliest  years  reveal  him  as  a  frequenter  of  the 
Boston  Mercantile  Library  Association,  "inflamed,"  Hke  Whipple 
himself,  "with  a  passionate  love  of  literature  and  by  a  cordial 
admiration  of  men  of  letters,"  discussing  and  trying  his  hand  at 
various  forms  of  verse,  and  already  beginning  to  assemble  a  library 
of  his  own.  Another  species  of  education  came  to  him  through 
Mr.  Hendee's  having  a  box  at  the  theatre  and  inviting  one  or 
more  of  the  boys  in  the  shop  to  occupy  it  with  him  every  night. 
In  this  way  it  is  recorded  that  Fields  "saw  the  elder  Booth,  Fanny 


37^  The  Saturday  Club 

Kemble  as  Juliet,  her  father,  and  In  short  all  the  good  actors  who 
came  to  America  at  that  time."  In  1838,  when  Fields  was  twenty- 
one,  he  "pronounced"  the  anniversary  poem  before  the  Mercan- 
tile Library  Association,  as  he  did  again  in  1848.  On  the  first  of 
these  occasions  Edward  Everett  was  the  orator  of  the  day,  on  the 
second,  Daniel  Webster.  At  about  the  time  of  delivering  the  first 
Mercantile  Library  poem  he  became  a  member  of  the  firm  of 
Ticknor,  Reed  &  Fields,  soon  to  take  the  more  familiar  name  of 
Ticknor  &  Fields  and  to  build  up  the  extraordinary  list  of  publi- 
cations which  have  so  enriched  the  catalogues  of  the  publishing 
firms  succeeding  to  their  business.  The  achievement  thus  repre- 
sented could  have  been  wrought  only  through  the  power  of  person- 
ality. This,  we  must  believe  from  a  mass  of  testimony,  was  what 
Fields  especially  brought  to  the  enterprise.  A  credible  witness 
may  well  be  cited  —  George  William  Curtis,  writing  in  Harper's 
Monthly  soon  after  the  death  of  the  subject  of  his  reminiscence:  — 
"The  annals  of  publishing,  and  the  traditions  of  publishers 
In  this  country,  will  always  mention  the  little  Corner  Book-Store 
In  Boston  as  you  turn  out  of  Washington  Street  Into  School 
Street,  and  those  who  recall  It  In  other  days  will  always  remember 
the  curtained  desk  at  which  poet  and  philosopher  and  historian 
and  divine,  and  the  doubting,  timid,  young  author,  were  sure  to  see 
the  bright  face  and  to  hear  the  hearty  welcome  of  James  T. 
Fields.  What  a  crowded,  busy  shop  It  was,  with  the  shelves  full 
of  books,  and  piles  of  books  upon  the  counters  and  tables,  and 
loiterers  tasting  them  with  their  eyes,  and  turning  the  glossy 
new  pages  —  loiterers  at  whom  you  looked  curiously,  suspecting 
them  to  be  makers  of  books  as  well  as  readers.  You  knew  that 
you  might  be  seeing  there  In  the  flesh  and  In  common  clothes  the 
famous  men  and  women  whose  genius  and  skill  made  the  old 
world  a  new  world  for  every  one  upon  whom  their  spell  lay.  Sud- 
denly, from  behind  the  green  curtain,  came  a  ripple  of  laughter, 
then  a  burst,  a  chorus;  gay  voices  of  two  or  three  or  more,  but 
always  of  one  —  the  one  who  sat  at  the  desk  and  whose  place  was 
behind  the  curtain,  the  literary  partner  of  the  house,  the  friend 
of  the  celebrated  circle  which  has  made  the  Boston  of  the  middle 
of  this  century  as  justly  renowned  as  the  Edinburgh  of  the  close 


y antes  Thomas  Fields  379 

of  the  last  century,  the  Edinburgh  that  saw  Burns,  but  did  not 
know  him.  That  curtained  corner  in  the  Corner  Book-Store  is 
remembered  by  those  who  knew  it  in  its  great  days,  as  Beaumont 
recalled  the  revels  at  the  immortal  tavern :  — 

'What  things  have  we  seen 
Done  at  the  Mermaid!  heard  words  that  have  been 
So  nimble  and  so  full  of  subtle  flame, 
As  if  that  every  one  from  whence  they  came 
Had  meant  to  put  his  whole  wit  in  a  jest! ' 

What  merry  peals!  What  fun  and  chaff  and  story!  Not  only  the 
poet  brought  his  poem  there  still  glowing  from  his  heart,  but  the 
lecturer  came  from  the  train  with  his  freshest  touches  of  local 
humour.  It  was  the  exchange  of  wit,  the  Rialto  of  current  good 
things,  the  hub  of  the  hub. 

"And  it  was  the  work  of  one  man.  Fields  was  the  genius  loci. 
Fields,  with  his  gentle  spirit,  his  generous  and  ready  sympathy, 
his  love  of  letters  and  of  literary  men,  his  fine  taste,  his  delightful 
humour,  his  business  tact  and  skill,  drew,  as  a  magnet  draws  its 
own,  every  kind  of  man,  the  shy  and  the  elusive  as  well  as  the  gay 
men  of  the  world  and  the  self-possessed  favourites  of  the  people. 
It  was  his  pride  to  have  so  many  of  the  American  worthies  upon  his 
list  of  authors,  to  place  there,  if  he  could,  the  English  poets  and 
'belles-lettres'  writers,  and  then  to  call  them  all  personal  friends." 

Another  bit  of  testimony  may  be  taken  from  an  unpublished 
letter  of  Cornelius  C.  Felton,  found  in  a  collection  of  autographs 
preserved  for  many  years  in  the  library  of  Mrs.  Fields.  Writing 
in  1849  to  thank  Fields  for  his  newly  published  volume  of  poems, 
Felton  said:  — 

"It  has  often  seemed  to  me  that  the  position  of  a  man  of  busi- 
ness, with  literary  tastes  and  talents,  is  one  of  rare  happiness. 
The  union  of  the  two  elements  of  life  works  out  a  more  manifold 
experience  than  either  alone,  and  gives  richer  materials  for  thought. 
While  business  steadies  and  utilizes  life,  the  cultivation  of  letters 
embellishes  and  dignifies  it.  A  merely  literary  life,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, is  neither  happy  nor  respectable;  a  merely  business  life 
may  be  very  happy  and  respectable,  but  It  wants  the  heightening 
touches  of  an  idealizing  imagination.     It  is  imperfect  and  one- 


3^0  T^he  Saturday  Club 

sided.  Boston  is  remarkable  for  the  number  of  men  who  unite  the 
two.  This  is  especially  the  case  with  the  younger  class,  to  which 
you  belong;  and  I  hope  you  will  always  continue  to  set  an  ex- 
ample of  the  entire  practicability  of  blending  with  commercial 
pursuits,  the  habit  of  literary  labour,  and  the  elegant  tastes  that 
naturally  connect  themselves  therewith." 

The  ideal  set  forth  in  these  words  is  particularly  applicable  to  a 
man  of  business  whose  commerce  is  with  books.  Its  fulfilment  in 
the  person  of  Fields  goes  far  to  explain  his  success  as  a  publisher. 
Because  he  was  not  merely  a  man  of  business  he  could  establish 
a  sympathy  and  understanding  between  his  firm  and  the  authors 
with  whom  it  dealt  which  led  to  the  following  expressions  in 
letters  found  also  among  the  Fields  autographs.  On  November 
29,  1855,  Robert  Browning  wrote  to  Fields:  "I  take  advantage  of 
the  opportunity  of  the  publication  in  the  United  States  of  my 
*Men  and  Women,'  —  for  printing  which,  you,  through  being 
more  righteous  than  the  Law,  have  liberally  remunerated  me,  — 
to  express  my  earnest  desire  that  the  power  of  publishing  in 
America  this  and  every  subsequent  work  of  mine  may  rest  ex- 
clusively with  you  and  your  house."  A  few  months  later,  March 
18,  1856,  Tennyson  wrote:  "From  you  alone  among  American 
publishers  have  I  ever  received  any  remuneration  for  my  books 
and  I  would  wish  therefore  that  with  you  alone  should  rest  the 
right  of  publishing  them  in  future." 

The  story  of  Fields's  visit  to  Hawthorne  in  Salem  and  his  bear- 
ing away  with  him  the  manuscript  of  The  Scarlet  Letter,  drawn  as 
if  by  necromancy  from  the  furtive  author,  is  one  of  the  most 
familiar  instances  of  his  friendly  handling  of  a  man  of  genius  to 
the  lasting  profit  both  of  the  writer  and  of  the  world.  In  a  diary 
of  Mrs.  Fields  is  found  an  entry.  May  4,  1868,  excellently  sug- 
gesting the  regard  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  Olympian  friends : 
"Mr.  Emerson  has  returned  from  New  York.  He  popped  into 
James's  room,  saying,  *How  is  the  guardian  and  malntalner  of  us 
all?'"  Dr.  Holmes  gave  a  characteristic  expression  to  a  kindred 
feeling  when  he  said,  in  a  conversation  also  recorded  by  Mrs. 
Fields:  "By  the  way,  Mr.  Fields,  do  you  appreciate  the  position 
you  hold  in  our  time?    There  never  was  anything  like  it.    Why, 


yames  Thomas  Fields  381 

I  was  nothing  but  a  roaring  kangaroo  when  you  took  me  in  hand 
and  I  thought  it  was  the  right  thing  to  stand  up  on  my  hind  legs, 
but  you  combed  me  down  and  put  me  in  proper  shape." 

In  these  journals  of  Mrs.  Fields,  of  which  she  left  far  the  greater 
portion  unpublished,  the  interests  of  her  husband  are  constantly 
reflected.  To  a  singular  degree  his  interests  were  hers.  In  1850 
Fields  had  married  Eliza  Willard,  a  daughter  of  Simon  Willard. 
She  lived  but  a  few  months  after  their  marriage.  In  November, 
1854,  he  married  her  cousin,  Annie  Adams,  a  daughter  of  Dr. 
Zabdiel  Boylston  Adams,  a  beautiful  girl  of  twenty,  keenly  re- 
sponsive to  all  the  intellectual,  spiritual,  and  personal  influences 
animating  the  circle  of  which  Fields  was  so  vital  a  member.  They 
soon  established  themselves  in  a  house  on  Charles  Street,  which 
for  sixty  years  —  more  than  thirty  of  them  extending  beyond  the 
lifetime  of  Fields  himself  —  was  the  scene  of  a  hospitality  which 
so  many  early  members  of  the  Saturday  Club  enjoyed  and  en- 
riched that  some  mention  of  it  must  be  made  in  this  place.  In- 
deed, the  Charles  Street  house,  furnished  with  its  collection  of 
precious  books,  pictures,  mementoes  of  valued  friendships,  no 
more  richly  than  with  the  friends  themselves,  was  an  integral 
part  of  the  life  of  James  T.  Fields.  Returning  to  it  from  meetings 
of  the  Saturday  Club,  it  was  evidently  the  pleasant  practice  of  its 
master  to  relate  to  its  mistress  the  talk  in  which  he  had  just  taken 
part;  and  it  was  hers  to  set  it  down  from  time  to  time  in  her  diaries. 
In  her  own  printed  pages  she  has  had  some  recourse  to  these 
records  of  an  earlier  day.  From  unpublished  entries  the  following 
passages  are  copied  —  not  so  much  for  the  intrinsic  value  of  their 
content  as  for  the  impression  they  may  yield  of  the  flavour  and 
spirit  of  the  Club  some  fifty  years  ago:  — 

"October  28,  1865.  Meeting  of  Jamie's  Club,  where  he  was 
much  amused  by  a  story  of  Lowell's  about  a  parrot  in  Cambridge 
who  had  become  highly  educated  and  was  heard  to  go  and 
deliver  political  addresses  to  the  ducks.  When  he  first  came  to 
the  ladies  who  have  given  him  this  fine  education,  he  could  say 
very  little  more  than  *  scratch,'  and  he  is  sometimes  heard  now- 
a-days,  still  as  if  ashamed  of  that  accomplishment,  saying  '  Scratch, 
scratch,'  low  to  himself  in  a  corner,  but  if  he  finds  himself  perceived 


3^2  "The  Saturday  Club 

he  will  turn  round  quickly  with  a  'How  d'  ye  do,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men.' 

"Mr.  Lowell  is  deeply  interested  in  the  derivations  of  words.  .  .  . 
He  complains  much  of  his  head,  perhaps  the  trouble  is  he  has 
filled  it  too  full.  Dr.  Hedge  quoted  a  few  words  of  an  old  Latin 
poem.  'Who  is  that  from .^' he  asked.  'Why,' said  Lowell,  repeat- 
ing the  remainder,  'that  is  Walter  Mapes.'  Speaking  of  Burns, 
Lowell  said  he  showed  his  greatness  as  a  poet  by  the  words  he  had 
created.  Whipple  amused  them  all  by  his  naivete  in  calling  out 
for  'stories'  from  Dana  and  afterward  from  Lowell.  Professor 
Holmes  was  ill,  but  Longfellow  was  there  and  presided  as  usual 
in  absence  of  Agassiz.  He  seemed  nervous,  as  is  not  infrequently 
the  case,  and  begged  Jamie  to  sit  by  his  side.  His  nervousness 
was  probably  not  decreased  by  Lowell's  stepping  up  to  him  and 
saying,  'Longfellow,  you  ought  not  to  have  printed  those  verses 
to  Agassiz;  they  are  all  very  well,  but  it  was  a  private  affair.' 
Dr.  Hedge  sat  next  J.  and  was  most  kindly.  A  nephew  of  John 
Bright  was  present. 

"The  Club  is  strongly  divided  about  Banks.  Emerson  and  Mr. 
Forbes  were  present,  but  sat  at  the  further  end  of  the  table,  so 
I  could  have  no  report  of  their  conversation.  .  .  . 

"Mr.  Dana  repeated  an  experience  of  the  Rev.  Chandler  Rob- 
bins,  who  was  called  to  Cambridge  to  the  marriage  of  an  under- 
taker. The  various  sextons  and  brother  undertakers  of  the  com- 
munity were  present,  and  he  was  privately  informed  that  the 
undertaker  about  to  be  married  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  lady 
because  he  found  her  'so  handy  at  the  business'  (she  had  been 
called  in  as  an  assistant),  'being  afraid  of  nothing.  Why,  there's 
a  corpse  upstairs  now,'  the  narrator  went  on  to  say, '  but  she  don't 
mind  it  a  bit.'  It  was  a  ghastly  time  enough  for  the  poor  parson." 

"Saturday,  November  25,  1865.  Jamie  went  to  the  Club.  It 
was  a  brilliant  meeting.  Dr.  Holmes  was  the  life  of  it  in  the  way  of 
conversation,  and  amused  them  all  excessively.  Peals  of  laughter 
followed  his  brilliant  sallies.  He  began  to  talk  about  homoe- 
opathy. 'Well,'  said  he,  'I  feel,  in  beginning  to  talk  upon  this  sub- 
ject, that  I  am  talking  to  a  set  of  ignoramuses;  that  is,  medicine  is 
a  subject  none  of  you  have  studied  and  I  have.  I  have  devoted  the 


yames  Thomas  Fields  3^3 

best  part  of  my  life  in  Europe  and  America  to  the  study  of  my  pro- 
fession. Now,  if  Mr.  Longfellow  should  begin  to  talk  about 
Dante,  I  should  feel  my  ignorance,  —  well,  no,  I  am  respectably 
informed  about  Dante,  but  then  I  should  listen  to  him  because  he 
has  given  his  time  to  the  study  of  it.'  And  so  on,  fighting  homoe- 
opathy to  the  death  and  amusing  them  all  with  his  boyishness. 

"G.  W.  Curtis  was  one  of  Jamie's  guests,  and  Mr.  Rice,  our 
representative,  another.  When  Mr.  Rice  was  introduced  to  Mr. 
Emerson,  the  latter  said,  *Mr.  Rice,  I  am  glad  to  meet  you,  Sir. 
I  often  see  your  name  in  the  papers  and  elsewhere,  and  I  am  happy 
to  take  you  by  the  hand  for  the  first  time.'  '  Not  for  the  first  time,' 
Mr.  Rice  replied;  'thirty-three  years  ago  I  was  passing  the  sum- 
mer in  Newton.  It  was  my  school  vacation,  and  I  was  enjoying 
the  woods  as  boys  will.  One  afternoon  I  was  walking  alone  when 
you  saw  me  and  joined  me  and  talked  of  the  voices  of  Nature  in  a 
way  which  stirred  my  boyish  pulses  and  left  me  thinking  of  your 
words  far  into  the  night.'  Mr.  Emerson  seemed  pleased  at  this, 
and  said  it  must  have  been  long  ago  indeed  when  he  ventured  to 
talk  of  such  fine  topics. 

"Mr.  Emerson  said  later,  talking  of  going  to  Europe,  that 
*  the  wily  American  would  elude  Europe  for  a  year  yet,  hoping 
exchange  would  go  down.'" 

When  conversations  are  not  reported  in  full,  sometimes  a  side- 
light, such  as  the  following  entry  of  February  25,  1867,  about  the 
Saturday  Club  meeting  of  the  23rd,  brings  its  bit  of  illumination: 
"Dr.  Holmes  was  in  a  great  mood  for  talk,  but  Lowell  was  critical 
and  interrupted  him  frequently.  'Now,  James,  let  me  talk  and 
don't  interrupt  me,'  he  once  said,  a  little  ruffled  by  the  continual 
strictures  upon  his  conversation."  Again,  May  2,  1868,  Norton 
is  reported  bitter  "against  the  Saturday  Club  (this  from  sym- 
pathy with  Lowell)  because  the  members  proposed  at  the  last 
meeting  were  all  blackballed.  He  thinks  they  must  have  a  new 
Club,  which  would  be  a  sad  thing;  it  would  be  a  square  split,  I 
am  afraid,  and  now  at  times  they  do  have  grand  social  festivals. 
I  hope  the  trouble  will  die  out  In  talk,  especially  as  Norton  goes 
away^  and  Lowell,  I  hope  and  believe,  would  never  organize  the 
opposition  himself."   ; 

*  This  was  just  before  a  long  absence  in  Europe. 


3^4  "The  Saturday  Club 

On  July  26,  1868,  Mrs.  Fields  wrote  of  the  meeting  held  the 
day  before:  "Professor  Peirce  and  Rowse  were  there.  *What  did 
Rowse  have  to  say  for  himself.?'  I  asked  J.  *0h!  he  was  very 
industrious  with  the  viands  and  told  me  a  story  about  a  book 
turned  out  of  the  press  in  twenty-four  hours,  over  which,  it  being 
one  of  my  own  stories  I  told  him  a  year  ago,  I  laughed  tremen- 
dously.'" Another  entry,  November  6,  1870,  describes  a  Sunday 
morning  visit  from  "Appleton  (Tom,  as  the  world  calls  him)," 
and  his  talk  on  a  variety  of  topics.  "He  spoke  of  the  Saturday 
Club,  and  said  that  although  he  sometimes  smiled  at  Holmes's 
enthusiasm  over  it,  he  believed  in  the  main  he  was  quite  right, 
and  it  would  be  remembered  in  future  as  Johnson's  Club  has  been, 
and  recorded  and  talked  of  in  the  same  way.  Unfortunately  I 
don't  see  their  Boswell.  I  wish  I  could  believe  there  was  a  single 
'  chiel  amang  them  takin'  notes.'  " 

The  notes  of  Mrs.  Fields  herself  make  some  amends  for  this 
deficiency,  and  though  another  passage,  from  a  diary  of  1871, 
deals  rather  with  a  continuation  of  a  Club  meeting  than  with  the 
meeting  itself,  the  talk  in  Charles  Street  seems  to  have  gone  on 
naturally  enough  from  that  at  the  Parker  House  to  make  the  line 
between  the  two  hardly  worth  drawing:  — 

"Saturday  night,  February  25,  was  Jamie's  Club  again.  After 
it  was  over  a  part  of  the  company^  adjourned  to  our  tea-table, 
Longfellow,  Bret  Harte  (his  first  appearance  among  the  literati  of 
our  shores),  Holmes,  Gay,  Hunt,  Ernest  Longfellow,  Frank  San- 
born, and  Jo.  Bradlee.  Bret  Harte  was  the  guest  of  the  day  and 
the  Club  was  unusually  large.  Jamie  thought  him  very  satis- 
factory. His  size  is  rather  under  than  over  the  ordinary,  his  face 
deeply  pitted  with  small-pox  which  has  left  a  redness  about  the 
eyes  as  it  is  so  apt  to  do.  Otherwise  he  is  fine-looking  and  reminded 
us  a  little  of  what  the  young  Dickens  must  have  been  —  less 
abounding,  but  of  kindred  nature.  Fine  hazel  eyes,  full  lips,  large 
moustache,  an  honest  smile  —  so  much  for  his  personality.  His 
accent  slightly  Western  and  his  colloquial  expression  careless  and 
inelegant  often.  His  aplomb  is  good  and  not  too  great.  He  is 
modest  and  refined.   Quite  unconscious  of  himself  as  a  prominent 

^  Not  all  members  of  the  Saturday  Club. 


yames  Thomas  Fields  385 

person  during  the  evening,  but  talking  and  listening  hy  turns  al- 
together naturally.  Speaking  of  the  companionship  we  have  heard 
so  much  of  between  the  rattlesnake  and  the  prairie  dog,  he  said 
he  had  often  seen  the  rattlesnake,  owl,  and  squirrel  coming  from 
the  same  hole  and  living  quite  happily  together.  The  warning 
of  the  snake  before  he  struck  prevented  him  from  being  as  dan- 
gerous as  many  reptiles,  because  it  gave  time  for  escape.  Dr. 
Holmes  then  cited  a  case  he  had  known  of  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  poison  of  the  rattlesnake  spread.  He  had  seen  a  part  of  the 
flesh  of  the  dog,  pinched  up  and  held  tightly  while  the  snake  was 
allowed  to  sting;  the  flesh  was  then  immediately  cut  out,  but  in 
half  an  hour  the  dog  would  be  dead.  Swift  as  light,  and  in  spite 
of  the  pinching  of  the  arteries,  which  would  prevent  the  free  cir- 
culation of  the  blood  certainly,  the  poison  flew  to  the  vital  part 
of  the  frame.  Dr.  Holmes  turned  the  talk  then  to  homoeopathy 
and  struggled  with  Longfellow  as  he  so  often  does  to  endeavour 
to  persuade  him,  but  L.  sits  and  smiles  over  the  rational  ravings 
of  the  doctor,  but  says  little.  Bret  Harte  is  not  a  homoeopathist 
and  brought  forward  as  a  point  against  it  that  it  had  no  fraternity 
with  science.  Science  advances,  but  homoeopathy  is  just  where  it 
was  when  Hahnemann  promulgated  his  first  extraordinary  doc- 
trines. Harte  talked  somewhat  from  time  to  time  of  the  Western 
life  and  landscape.  Speaking  with  me  of  Miss  Phillips,  whom  he 
likes  as  much  as  we  do  as  a  singer  and  woman  (I  should  have  put 
it  the  other  way),  I  asked  if  she  had  made  a  pecuniary  success 
there  with  the  public.  'I  don't  know,'  he  said  doubtfully;  'I  think 
if  the  Angel  Gabriel  should  go  to  California  he  would  not  make  a 
success!'  He  told  Mr.  Fields  a  story  of  two  men  stopping  at  a 
Western  inn.  One  used  wonderfully  powerful  language  in  swearing 
and  the  other  expressed  to  the  innkeeper  appreciation  of  this  strong 
language.  'Ohl'  said  the  innkeeper,  'that's  nothing,  that  ain't! 
You  should  hear  him  exhort  an  indolent  and  impenitent  mule.^^'* 

A  final  passage  from  the  journal  of  Mrs.  Fields  recalls  the 
Club's  observance  of  the  centenary  of  Sir  Walter  Scott:  — 

"Sunday,  August  27,  1871.  Jamie  dined  with  the  Club  yester- 
day and  Walter  Scott  was  remembered  as  if  it  were  his  birthday. 
Agassiz  presided  and  there  were  three  Scotch  professors  present; 


386  The  Saturday  Club 

also  Emerson,  Judge  Hoar,  Holmes,  Edward  Perkins  (guest), 
Hedge,  Thayer  (guest),  author  of  life  of  Beethoven,  Sumner,  and 
others.  Lowell  was  absent  at  Mt.  Desert  and  Longfellow  at  Na- 
hant.  Jamie  suggested  to  Agassiz  that  it  was  time  to  begin  the  talk 
about  Scott;  'Thank  70U,  my  dear  Fields,  I  had  entirely  forgotten 
it.  I  have  been  busily  discussing  scientific  subjects  with  my  friend. 
I  ought  also  to  confess  to  this  company  that  I  have  read  only  one 
of  the  novels  of  Walter  Scott,  that  is  Ivanhoe,  but  if  God  please, 
before  my  death  I  will  read  two  more.  My  time  is  always  much 
occupied  in  other  directions  and  it  was  not  until  I  came  to  this 
country  that  I  read  even  Ivanhoe.''  He  then  introduced  one  of  the 
Scotch  professors,  who  spoke  of  Sir  Walter  as  having  kindled  the 
fires  of  imagination  upon  the  soil  of  Scotland.  He  said  he  was 
the  son  of  a  clergyman  and  the  only  three  books  given  him  in  his 
childhood  were  Bostock's  Four  States  of  Man,  Flavel  On  Infidelity, 
and  Pilgrim's  Progress.  He  liked  the  latter  book  so  well  that  he 
asked  his  father  if  it  were  wicked  to  read  on  week-days  a  book  he 
liked  so  much  on  Sundays.  'Imagine,'  he  said,  'what  Walter 
Scott's  novels  were  to  me!'  A  brother  professor  discussed  the 
point  whether  Burns  or  Scott  had  contributed  the  most  largely 
to  the  cultivation  of  imagination  in  Scotland.  The  first  held  out 
for  Sir  Walter  —  Burns  being,  as  he  said,  too  violent  and  eccentric 
in  his  power  to  influence  a  large  number  of  people.  Holmes  came 
in  with  great  enthusiasm,  said  a  few  words,  and  read  his  own 
published  letter.  Emerson  spoke  with  brilliant  effect  and  beauty 
two  or  three  times.  Judge  Hoar  first  called  him  out  by  saying  that 
he  was  chopping  wood  that  morning  in  his  woodshed  when  Emer- 
son came  in.  He  said  such  brilliant  things  and  spoke  so  well  of 
Sir  Walter  that  if  he  could  only  repeat  a  portion  at  the  table  he 
would  delight  them  all.  Emerson  rose  then  and  retorted  with  a 
reference  to  the  brilliancy  of  the  Judge's  imagination  which  had 
conjured  up  such  things  in  a  woodshed.  He  then  expressed  his  sense 
of  gratitude  for  Sir  Walter,  but  said  that  the  root  and  gist  of  his 
genius  was  all  to  be  found  in  the  Border  Minstrelsy." 

Faint  echoes  these  may  be  from  a  time  long  past.  They  are 
here  evoked  at  least  partly  that  they  may  suggest  something  of 
the  spirit  which  Fields  brought  to  the  meetings  of  the  Saturday 


yames  Thomas  Fields  3^7 

Club  and  carried  from  them  Into  his  daily  walk  and  conversa- 
tion. A  member  of  the  local  society  of  scholars  only  by  adoption 
—  through  his  honorary  degrees  of  Master  of  Arts  from  Harvard 
in  1858  and  Doctor  of  Laws  from  Dartmouth  in  1874  —  more 
exuberant  in  the  expressions  of  his  personality  than  most  of  the 
group  of  thinkers  and  writers  with  whom  he  was  so  closely  iden- 
tified, Fields  contributed  to  the  atmosphere  of  his  time  and  place 
something  for  which  it  was  clearly  the  better.  By  reason  both  of 
his  abundant  social  qualities,  and  of  personal  contacts  established 
and  vigorously  maintained  through  travel,  correspondence,  and 
all  the  offices  of  friendship  with  the  most  interesting  men  and 
women  of  his  race  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  his  horizons  were 
broader  than  those  of  inmost  Boston  —  and  different.  A  certain 
spice  and  colour  were  added  to  the  Boston  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury in  its  prime  by  the  very  attributes  of  which  Fields,  amongst 
his  contemporaries,  was  a  notable  possessor.  His  place  of  business, 
his  house,  his  talk,  his  letters,  his  writings  and  lectures,  in  a  word 
all  the  tokens  of  himself,  provided  a  distinctive  element  without 
which  Boston  in  his  time  would  not  have  been  quite  the  vivid 
place  it  was.  He  died  at  his  house  in  Charles  Street,  April  24, 
1881. 

M.  A.  DeW.  H. 


SAMUEL  WORCESTER  ROWSE 

This  artist  was  born  in  Maine,  perhaps  about  1826,  or  a  little 
later.  He  probably  had  only  limited  school  advantages,  but  had 
native  skill  in  drawing,  and  read  good  things.  Owing  to  his  mod- 
esty and  reticence,  little  is  known  of  his  early  life  except  that,  as 
a  youth,  he  lived  in  Augusta.  His  first  work  connected  with  art 
was  employment  in  the  engraving  of  bank  bills. 

When  he  came  to  Boston,  perhaps  during  the  early  fifties,  his 
acquaintances  presently  found  that  he  had  an  astonishing  famili- 
arity with  Shakspeare.  Later,  he  confided  to  them  that  in  his 
youth  he  had  a  burning  desire  to  go  on  to  the  stage.  At  last  he 
had  the  opportunity  to  appear  as  Richard  lU,  but  this  ended  in 
tragic  failure.  Nevertheless  Shakspeare  remained  with  him  as  a 
part  of  his  life.  When  a  question  arose  if,  or  where,  an  expression 
occurred  in  Shakspeare,  Mr.  Rowse  could  suggest  in  what  play  to 
find  it,  and  in  the  mouth  of  what  character.  Whether  or  not  he  had 
instruction  in  drawing  in  Boston  does  not  appear,  but  he  soon 
made  a  name  there  for  his  crayon  portraits,  accurate  and  delicate. 
Lowell  became  acquainted  with  him,  liked  him  and  his  work. 
Through  him  Rowse  became  known  to  the  Nortons  and  visited 
them  at  Newport,  and,  through  many  orders,  his  circle  of  friends 
in  Boston  and  Cambridge  society  was  enlarged.  He  was  kindly, 
"cosy,"  as  a  lady  who  knew  him  well  put  it,  yet  sometimes  uncom- 
fortably modest  and  aloof  in  company.  Yet  Lowell  said,  "Rowse 
may  be  silent,  but  he  always  says  the  best  thing  of  the  evening." 

In  many  households  in  and  near  Boston  into  which  his  art 
brought  him,  Rowse  probably  was  often  a  guest  while  making 
his  drawings,  and  thus,  shy  or  reserved  as  he  was,  his  serious 
and  original  speech  made  him  interesting  as  a  man  to  the  men 
and  also  to  the  women  whom  he  drew.  Longfellow  writes  in  his 
journal,  March  3,  1858:  "Rowse  began  yesterday  to  draw  my 
head  in  crayons;  his  own  idea,  so  I  let  him  work  away.  He  is  a 
very  clever  artist,  a  Maine  man."    And  a  little  later:  "Rowse 


Samuel  Worcester  Rozvse 

FROM  A  SKETCH  BY  HIMSELF  IN  A  LETTER 


^'  1/' 


Samuel  JVorcester  Rowse         3^9 

resumes  portrait.  But  I  find  time  notwithstanding  to  write  a  whole 
canto  of  Miles  Standish" 

}  In  the  next  month,  Rowse,  commissioned  by  Mr.  Norton  to 
draw  Emerson's  head,  is  domiciled  at  his  home  in  Concord  and 
Emerson  notes  in  his  journal:  "Rowse  said  that  a  portrait  should  be 
made  by  a  few  continuous  strokes,  giving  the  great  lines;  but  if 
made  by  labour  and  by  many  corrections,  though  it  became  at 
last  accurate,  it  would  give  an  artist  no  pleasure  —  would  look 
muddy.   Anybody  could  make  a  likeness  by  main  strength." 

When  the  sitting  was  over,  Emerson  would  surely  have  invited 
his  guest  to  walk  with  him  to  the  woods,  and  probably  to  swim  in 
Walden's  clear  water.  This  fragment  of  their  talk  remains: 
"Rowse  said,  *God  made  him  because  he  could  not  help  it,  and 
therefore  he  did  not  care  for  God,  but  for  the  necessity,  or  that 
which  is.'  I  replied,  'You  say  God  made  you;  no,  it  was  that 
necessity  which  is  the  true  God,  and  you  must  care  for  that,  and 
do  it  homage,  because  you  are  of  it,  and  it  is  immense  and  indis- 
pensable.  You  put  the  name  of  God  on  the  wrong  party.'" 

The  portrait  prospered,  had  a  pleasing  freedom  in  the  handling, 
an  open-air  look.  But  one  morning  Rowse  got  up  early  and  en- 
deavoured to  make  some  little  improvement.  When  the  family 
came  down  to  breakfast  he  told  them  that  the  meddling  had 
been  fatal,  and  he  must  begin  again.  The  picture  was  probably 
destroyed  by  him,  but  fortunately  a  small  photograph  was  taken 
at  Mrs.  Emerson's  request,  which  is  reproduced  in  Volume  VI 
of  the  large-paper  Centenary  Edition  of  Emerson's  Works.  The 
new  picture  pleased  Mr.  Norton.  He  wrote  in  a  letter  after  Rowse' s 
death,  to  a  lady,  a  mutual  friend,  "To  those  who  did  not  know 
him  personally  his  name  is  likely  to  recall  the  draughtsman  of  the 
best  portrait  of  Emerson."  Yet  that  was  no  great  praise  (Mr. 
Norton  would  not  have  counted  Hawes's  admirable  daguerreo- 
type and  the  photographs  taken  from  it),  as  two  weak  early  minia- 
tures, a  crayon,  probably  by  Mrs.  Hildreth,  and  David  Scott's 
wooden  painting,  done  in  Edinburgh  in  1847,  were  all  the  rivals. 
Yet  Rowse's  crayon,  which  always  hung  at  Shady  Hill,  is  a 
good  likeness,  but  tightly  drawn  and  with  a  weak  mouth.  But  the 
charming  portrait  by  Rowse  of  ArthurHugh  Clough,  and  that  of 


39^  'The  Saturday  Club 

Mr.  Francis  Cabot  Lowell  of  Waltham,  should  be  mentioned  as 
his  high-water  mark. 

Rowse  had  a  room  in  the  Studio  Building  among  the  other  ar- 
tists of  the  day.  Writing  thence  in  1869  to  Miss  Jane  Norton  in 
Europe,  he  announces:  "I  have  painted  a  portrait,  and  it  is  very 
good,  really.  I'm  very  much  pleased  with  it."  Hastily  scrawled 
in  pen  and  ink  on  the  corner  of  this  letter  is  a  fair  sketch  of  himself 
as  I  recall  him  while  drawing  my  father's  portrait.  He  liked  to 
adorn  his  pleasant  and  sometimes  humorous  letters  with  mar- 
ginal play.  Mr.  Lowell  liked  Rowse's  efforts  in  oil  painting;  said, 
"They  have  streaks  of  genius  in  them." 

Among  Rowse's  notable  set  of  friends  was  Chauncey  Wright 
whose  genius  was  so  highly  prized  by  his  Cambridge  acquaintances. 
He  and  Rowse  were  in  Europe  at  the  time  the  Nortons  were  there, 
in  1872.  Unlike  most  artists,  Rowse  was  not  greatly  drawn  by  all 
the  beauty  of  antiquity  and  association  that  Europe  offers.  In 
1 88 1,  he  writes  to  Miss  Grace  Norton  from  Paris,  where  he  had 
been  disappointed  in  not  finding  Lowell:  "I  am  very  glad  that  I 
came  abroad  at  this  time.  I  have  been  refreshed  and  edified,  and 
I  am  now  glad  to  go  home.  America  looks  pleasant  to  me  at  this 
distance  as  it  did  when  I  was  near.  I  have  a  good  notion  that  I 
won't  come  again.  But  I  won't  promise.  The  wind  bloweth  where 
it  listeth.  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man,  and  I  can  study 
him  and  myself  better  in  America  than  anywhere  else.  America  is 
to  me  the  centre  and  the  head  of  the  world  —  the  last  incarna- 
tion. The  interest  is  all  there  for  me.  America  was  never  meant 
by  Providence  as  a  place  of  refuge  for  the  weak  and  the  careless, 
or  to  breed  an  inferior  race  of  men  or  horses!" 

After  1880,  living  mainly  in  New  York,  Rowse  had  made  friends 
of  a  family,  cordial  and  generous  towards  him  thereafter  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  They  earnestly  desired  that  he  should  paint  a  large 
picture  of  their  two  beautiful  daughters.  Miss  Norton  tells  me 
that  this  he  laid  out  on  a  grand  scale,  to  be  a  magnum  opus^  with 
landscape  and  accompaniments,  like  a  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 
The  family  greatly  valued  him  and  encouraged  the  work.  But 
it  proved  a  tragedy.  His  health  began  to  fail,  there  were  inter- 
ruptions on  both  sides.    In  1895  he  wrote  sadly  of  the  attempt. 


Samuel  TJ^orcester  Rowse         3  9  ^ 

One  or  both  of  the  young  girls  whom  he  began  to  paint  were  ma- 
trons now.  Yet  the  family  had  taken  him  into  their  friendship  and 
urged  him  to  go  on,  although  seven  years  had  passed.  So,  against 
his  convictions,  he  had  begun  again  and  now  five  years  had  passed; 
"Still,  I  think  it  worth  finishing,  and  it  seems  as  if  a  few  days 
will  be  all  it  will  need  and  I  expect  to  get  those  next  summer." 
But  apparently  when  he  had  recognized  his  failing  eyesight  and, 
after  treatment,  returned,  he  found  to  his  dismay  the  colours  all 
wrong.  The  picture  seems  not  to  have  ever  been  finished.  Inter- 
ruptions and  ill-health  came  between,  yet  he  declared  in  a  letter 
from  Rome,  where  he  was  with  his  patrons,  his  faith  that  "The 
nature  of  things  is  friendly  to  the  wishes  of  humankind.  Our 
means  to  arrive  at  these  wishes  are  always  subject  to  the  nature  of 
things  with  which  they  must  accord.   As  Dr.  Watts  says,  — ■ 

'Eternity  is  all  too  short 
To  utter  forth  Thy  praise.' 

Some  of  my  friends  seem  to  think  that  I  must  be  very  lonesome. 
I  can  bear  a  good  deal  of  loneliness.  I  can't  think  any  one  likes  a 
little  company  more  than  I  do.  But  I  have  always  found  myself 
—  'the  Lord  be  thankit'  —  most  abundantly  cheerful."  He 
longed  to  return  from  New  York  to  Boston  and  his  friends  there, 
but  his  asthma  forbade.  He  grew  steadily  feebler  and  died  about 
the  end  of  the  old  century  or  the  coming  in  of  the  new. 

I  quote  a  few  expressions  from  the  letter  of  his  intimate  friend 
concerning  Mr.  Rowse:  "He  was  a  rare  man,  and  few  knew  the 
depth  of  his  character  —  his  integrity  and  the  strength  of  his  af- 
fectionate fidelity.  ...  I  found  much  proof  of  the  strong  attach- 
ment of  his  friends,  and  also  of  his  generosity."  He  then  mentions 
the  considerable  estate  that  he  left,  adding:  "The  foundation  of 
this  was  certainly  the  work  of  his  hands.  When  was  'crayon 
headsman'  ever  so  rich  before!" 

Mr.  Norton  in  his  old  age  wrote,  "We  who  knew  Rowse  shall 
remember  him  as  one  of  the  few  whom  we  have  known  who  had 
genuine  originality  of  mind  with  depth  and  delicacy  of  sentiment." 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  XII 

1865 

Bow  down,  dear  Land,  for  thou  hast  found  release! 
Thy  God,  in  these  distempered  days. 
Hath  taught  thee  the  sure  wisdom  of  His  ways. 

And  though  thine  enemies  hath  wrought  thy  peace! 
Bow  down  in  prayer  and  praise. 

Lowell 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  year,  Mr.  Fessenden,  President  Lin- 
coln's Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  having  been  renominated 
for  the  Senate,  was  about  to  withdraw  from  the  Cabinet,  where 
his  services  had  been  found  invaluable  at  a  time  of  great  finan- 
cial strain  for  the  Country.  Mr.  Forbes,  writing  to  him,  said,  — 
"Where  shall  we  look  for  a  man  big  enough  to  fill  your  place .^  .  .  . 
Governor  Andrew  is  going  out  of  office  here  after  this  year,  and 
can  go  without  great  damage  to  our  State  affairs  any  time  on 
sixty  days'  notice.  He  ought  to  be  in  the  Cabinet,  and  while,  for 
his  own  sake,  his  friends  would  like  to  see  him  in  some  other  place 
less  arduous  and  less  dangerous,  he  is,  in  my  judgment,  the  next 
best  man  after  you  for  the  place.  I  have  summered  and  wintered 
him  for  five  years  of  war  and  trouble,  and  while  he  represents  the 
most  advanced  opinions  on  politics,  I  know  no  man  who  so  fully 
unites  tact  and  judgment  with  perseverance  and  force." 

The  Governor,  however,  declined  to  be  a  candidate  for  this 
portfolio.  He  wrote  to  his  friend:  "For  myself,  I  should  dread 
to  undertake  any  place  but  that  of  Attorney-General.  My  legal 
training  and  tastes  would  help  me  to  master  its  duties,  while  the 
functions  and  opportunities  for  usefulness  in  that  office  are  such 
as  peculiarly  tempt  me  to  risk  a  failure  for  the  chance  of  doing 
good,  according  to  my  way  of  thinking,  which  it  affords."  This 
office,  however,  was  not  offered  to  him. 

At  the  seat  of  war  in  Virginia,  General  Sheridan,  summoned  by 
General  Grant,  yet  allowed  a  very  free  hand,  started  with  his 


iS6s 


393 


cavalry,  in  the  last  days  of  February,  and,  in  spite  of  almost  im- 
possible mud  and  swollen  streams,  rode  across  country  from  the 
Shenandoah  Valley  towards  Richmond,  defeating  Early  and  de- 
stroying Southern  supplies,  and  reported  to  Grant  at  City  Point, 
/resident  Lincoln  was  there  domiciled  on  board  the  little  Mary 
Martin  steamboat.  All  three  of  them  knew  that  the  dwindling 
Confederate  troops  were  short  of  supplies,  discouraged,  and  the 
fear  was  that  they  would  slip  away,  try  to  join  Johnston,  and  pro- 
long the  war  farther  South  another  year. 

To  quote  the  admirable  little  book  of  Colonel  Newhall,  of 
Sheridan's  staff:  "To  help  matters  along  and  give  matters  a  cheer- 
ful aspect  it  began  to  rain,  first  a  Scotch  mist  .  .  .  then  a  pour,  as 
if  the  equinox,  hurrying  through  the  elements,  had  kicked  over 
the  water-buckets.  About  this  time.  General  Grant  was  seized 
with  the  desire 'to  end  the  matter  before  going  back.'  His  illogical 
mind  failed  to  be  affected  by  the  logic  of  events,  failed  to  per- 
ceive that  things  were  looking  about  as  badly  as  they  could  for 
accomplishing  anything,  and  so  he  sent  a  despatch  to  General 
Sheridan  countermanding  [certain  milder  conditional  orders], 
and  directing  him  to  find  the  enemy's  right  and  rear  as  soon  as 
possible.  General  Sheridan  rode  over  to  Headquarters,  water 
dripping  from  every  angle  of  his  face  and  clothes,  .  .  .  and  between 
them  they  settled  that,  as  soon  as  it  was  within  the  limits  of  horse 
possibility  for  cavalry  to  move,  they  would  move  a  little  and 
see  what  came  of  it,  if  only  to  pass  the  time.  .  .  .  The  only  thing 
probably  that  could  have  amused  the  company  on  that  inauspi- 
cious morning  would  have  been  an  excited  horseman  straining 
through  the  treacherous  soil,  waving  his  hat,  and  crying  out  that 
Lee  would  surrender  to  Grant  one  hundred  miles  from  there  in  ten 
days  from  date."  ^ 

And  it  happened.  Lee  was  thus  forced  to  come  out  of  his  strong 
entrenchments  and  hazard  the  last  chance  to  save  his  army.  The 
good  news  seemed  incredible;  it  was  so  sudden.  The  relief  and 
joy  of  the  Country  were  beyond  words.  In  their  gratitude  to  their 
great  General,  the  people,  and  surely  our  actively  patriotic  Club, 

*  JVith  Sheridan  in  Lee's  Last  Campaign,  by  a  Staff  Officer.  Philadelphia,  Lippincott 
&Co.  1866. 


394  "The  Saturday  Club 

accepted,  and  came  to  rejoice  in,  the  humane  and  wise  conditions 
which  he  made  with  brave  and  vanquished  countrymen. 

On  the  day  after  Lee's  surrender,  April  lo,  Norton  wrote  to 
Lowell;  "My  heart  is  as  full  as  it  can  be.  I  did  not  know  until  it 
was  lifted  this  morning  how  heavy  a  load  we  had  been  bearing. 
I  think  of  all  those  that  suffered  that  we  might  rejoice.  The  dawn 
of  our  new  day  is  bright." 

Lowell  answers:  "The  news,  my  dear  Charles,  is  from  Heaven. 
I  felt  a  strange  and  tender  exaltation.  I  wanted  to  laugh  and  I 
wanted  to  cry,  and  ended  by  holding  my  peace  and  being  de- 
voutly thankful.  There  is  something  magnificent  in  having  a 
Country  to  love.  It  is  almost  like  what  one  feels  for  a  woman. 
Not  so  tender,  perhaps,  but  to  the  full  as  self-forgetful.  I  worry 
a  little  about  reconstruction,  but  am  inclined  to  think  that  mat- 
ters will  very  much  settle  themselves."  This  thought  was  to  reap- 
pear, cast  in  beautiful  form,  in  the  last  stanza  of  the  "Ode"  at  the 
Commemoration  in  that  happy  summer. 

Following  close  upon  the  glad  tidings  of  the  triumph  of  the 
cause  of  Union  and  Freedom  came  the  shock  of  the  murder  of 
America's  guide  through  the  weary  years  of  war.  Heavily  as  this 
blow  fell  upon  all  of  our  company,  I  find  few  written  words  from 
them  about  it,  except  Emerson's  address  to  his  townsfolk,  and 
Lowell's  fine  tribute  In  the  "Commemoration  Ode,"  and  also  a 
passage  quoted  from  a  magazine  article  by  him  In  Mr.  Scudder's 
memoir.  Speaking  of  the  quick  transmission  of  the  tragic  news  he 
wrote:  "It  is  no  trifling  matter  that  thirty  millions  of  men  should 
be  thinking  the  same  thought  and  feeling  the  same  pang  at  a 
single  moment  of  time,  and  that  these  vast  parallels  of  latitude 
should  become  a  neighbourhood  more  Intimate  than  many  a  coun- 
try village.  The  dream  of  Human  Brotherhood  seems  to  becoming" 
true  at  last.  The  peasant  who  dipped  his  net  in  the  Danube  .  .  . 
perhaps  never  heard  of  Caesar,  or  Caesar's  murder;  but  the  shot 
that  shattered  the  forecasting  brain,  and  curdled  the  warm,  sweet 
heart  of  the  most  American  of  Americans,  echoed  along  the  wires 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  a  continent,  swelling  all  eyes 
at  once  with  tears  of  indignant  sorrow.  .  .  .  What  is  Beethoven's 
'Funeral  March  for  the  Death  of  a  Hero,'  to  the  symphony  of 


i86s 


395 


love,  pity,  and  wrathful  resolve  which  the  telegraph  of  that  April 
morning  played  on  the  pulses  of  a  nation?" 

Now,  to  go  back  a  little  to  a  happier  theme.  In  1863,  word  had 
come  to  Norton  from  Italy  that  Florence  would  celebrate  in  1865 
the  six-hundredth  anniversary  of  her  great  poet's  birth,  and  that 
she  invited  all  lovers  of  him,  wherever  they  might  be,  to  unite  with 
her  in  doing  honour  to  his  memory  —  which  news  Norton  carried 
to  Longfellow,  asking  him  to  postpone  the  bringing  out  of  his 
translation  of  the  Inferno  that  it  might  grace  that  occasion.  So, 
in  February,  Longfellow  sent  the  volume  to  Sumner  in  Washing- 
ton, asking  him  to  hand  it  to  the  Italian  Minister,  requesting  him 
to  forward  it  to  Italy.  He  also  bade  his  friend  to  express,  to  the 
Minister  his  regrets  that  the  Purgatorio  and  Paradiso  were  not 
yet  ready.  He  asked  them  both  to  look  at  the  volume,  saying,  "  It 
is  beautiful  and  worthy  of  the  Italian  press;  all  written,  printed, 
bound,  in  Cambridge,  Middlesex  County,  Massachusetts."  Long- 
fellow diligently  pursued  his  task  and,  later  in  the  year,  notes  in 
his  journal:  "Lowell,  Norton,  and  myself  had  the  first  meeting 
of  our  Dante  Club.  We  read  the  XXV  Purgatorio  and  then  had 
a  little  supper.  We  are  to  meet  every  Wednesday  evening  at  my 
house."  In  the  Life  of  Longfellow  his  brother  gives,  in  a  note, 
Mr.  Norton's  interesting  account  of  these  happy  meetings  of  the 
scholar-friends.  "Master  as  Longfellow  was,"  he  writes,  "of  his 
own  language  and  that  of  Dante,  and  thorough  as  was  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  substance  and  significance  of  the  poem,  he  was  too 
modest  to  rely  wholly  upon  his  own  judgment  and  genius  in  the 
performance  of  his  work,  and  he  called  upon  two  of  his  friends 
to  sit  with  him  in  the  final  revision  of  it."  Longfellow  would  read 
from  a  proof-sheet  a  canto  of  his  translation.  "We  paused  over 
every  doubtful  passage,  discussed  the  various  readings,  con- 
sidered the  true  meaning  of  obscure  words  and  phrases,  sought 
for  the  most  exact  equivalent  of  Dante's  expression,  objected, 
criticised,  praised,  with  a  freedom  that  was  made  perfect  by  Mr. 
Longfellow's  absolute  sweetness,  simplicity,  and  modesty,  and  by 
the  entire  confidence  that  existed  between  us.^   Witte's  text  was 

1  Longfellow  carefully  noted  these  criticisms,  considered  them  apart,  and  made  his  own 
decision. 


39^  The  Saturday  Club 

always  before  us,  and,  of  the  early  commentators,  Buti  was  the 
one  to  whom  we  had  most  frequent  and  most  serviceable  recourse. 
They  were  delightful  evenings;  there  could  be  no  pleasanter  occu- 
pation; the  spirits  of  poetry,  of  learning,  of  friendship,  were  with 
us.  Now  and  then  some  other  friend  or  acquaintance  would  join 
us  for  the  hours  of  study.  Almost  always  one  or  two  guests  would 
come  in  at  ten  o'clock,  when  the  work  ended,  and  sit  down  with 
us  to  a  supper,  with  which  the  evening  closed." 

The  genial  and  hospitable  Fields  was  always  eagerly  questioned, 
on  his  return  from  the  Club  dinner,  by  his  wife,  who,  happily  for 
the  editors  of  this  volume,  felt  that  some  notes  should  be  preserved 
of  the  gatherings  of  that  notable  company.  These  she  wrote  in  her 
journal,  and  kindly  had  some  of  the  entries,  taken  between  1865 
and  1871,  copied  for  our  use.  These  will  appear  at  their  proper 
places.  The  first  is  as  follows;  though  a  little  out  of  place,  it 
seemed  to  come  in  better  here  than  among  the  more  important 
earlier  events  of  the  year:  "February  24th.  1865.  Club  Meeting. 
Mr.  James  and  Dr.  Hedge  there,  and  to  Mr.  James's  discomfiture. 
Dr.  Hedge  attacked  him  about  Swedenborg.  Mr.  James  left  early 
saying,  that  Dr.  Hedge  was  always  bringing  up  Swedenborg 
against  him."  Mr.  Aldrich,  Mr.  Howells,  Mr.  Rowse,  Mr.  Akers, 
and  Justin  Winsor  came  afterward  to  tea  with  Mrs.  Fields  and  ap- 
parently were  at  the  Club  together. 

At  this  time  only  Mr.  Rowse  of  the  latter  group  was  a  member, 
Howells  and  Aldrich  not  being  chosen  in  for  some  years  later. 
They  came  as  guests.  Benjamin  Paul  Akers,  the  sculptor,  prob- 
ably came  with  Rowse. 

Agassiz  had  planned  to  explore  Brazil  and  the  Amazons,  ac- 
companied by  Mrs.  Agassiz,  and  recruited  a  party  of  naturalists 
and  students  at  his  Museum,  William  James  among  them,  and 
Mr.  Ward's  son,  Thomas  Wren  Ward,  as  helpers.  On  the  23d  of 
March,  a  dinner  was  given  him  at  the  Union  Club,  apparently  by 
the  Saturday  Club,  and  there  were  a  dozen  guests  present. 

Dr.  Holmes  was  counted  on,  and  not  in  vain,  and  read  with 
affection  and  pleasure 


i86s 


397 


A  FAREWELL  TO  AGASSIZ 

How  the  mountains  talked  together, 

Looking  down  upon  the  weather, 

When  they  heard  our  friend  had  planned  his 

Little  trip  among  the  Andes! 

How  they'll  bare  their  snowy  scalps 

To  the  climber  of  the  Alps 

When  the  cry  goes  through  their  passes, 
'Here  comes  the  great  Agassiz!" 
'Yes,  I'm  tall,"  says  Chimborazo, 
'But  I  wait  for  him  to  say  so,  — 

That's  the  only  thing  that  lacks,  —  he 

Must  see  me,  Cotopaxi!" 
'Ay,  ay!"  the  fire-peak  thunders, 
'And  he  must  view  my  wonders! 

I  'm  but  a  lonely  crater 

Till  I  have  him  for  spectator!" 

The  mountain  hearts  are  yearning, 

The  lava-torches  burning, 

The  rivers  bend  to  meet  him, 

The  forests  bow  to  greet  him, 

It  thrills  the  spinal  column 

Of  fossil  fishes  solemn, 

And  glaciers  crawl  the  faster, 

To  the  feet  of  their  old  master! 

Heaven  keep  him  well  and  hearty, 

Both  him  and  all  his  party! 

From  the  sun  that  broils  and  smites, 

From  the  centipede  that  bites. 

From  the  hailstorm  and  the  thunder, 

From  the  vampire  and  the  condor, 

From  the  gust  upon  the  river. 

From  the  sudden  earthquake  shiver, 

From  the  trip  of  mule  or  donkey, 

From  the  midnight  howling  monkey. 

From  the  stroke  of  knife  or  dagger. 

From  the  puma  and  the  jaguar. 

From  the  horrid  boa-constrictor 

That  has  scared  us  in  the  pictur'. 

From  the  Indians  of  the  Pampas, 

Who  would  dine  upon  their  grampas, 

From  every  beast  and  vermin 

That  to  think  of  sets  us  squirmin', 

From  every  snake  that  tries  on 

The  traveller  his  p'ison, 


39^  The  Saturday  Club 


From  every  pest  of  Natur', 

Likewise  the  alligator, 

And  from  two  things  left  behind  him,  — 

(Be  sure  they'll  try  to  find  him,) 

The  tax-bill  and  assessor,  — 

Heaven  keep  the  great  Professor! 

May  he  find,  with  his  apostles, 

That  the  land  is  full  of  fossils. 

That  the  waters  swarm  with  fishes 

Shaped  according  to  his  wishes, 

That  every  pool  is  fertile 

In  fancy  kinds  of  turtle. 

New  birds  around  him  singing, 

New  insects,  never  stinging, 

With  a  million  novel  data 

About  the  articulata, 

And  facts  that  strip  off  all  husks 

From  the  history  of  moUusks. 

And  when,  with  loud  Te  Deum, 
He  returns  to  his  Museum, 
May  he  find  the  monstrous  reptile 
That  so  long  the  land  has  kept  ill 
By  Grant  and  Sherman  throttled. 
And  by  Father  Abraham  bottled, 
(All  specked  and  streaked  and  mottled 
With  the  scars  of  murderous  battles. 
Where  he  clashed  the  iron  rattles 
That  gods  and  men  he  shook  at,) 
For  all  the  world  to  look  at! 

God  bless  the  great  Professor! 
And  Madam,  too,  God  bless  her! 
Bless  him  and  all  his  band. 
On  the  sea  and  on  the  land, 
Bless  them  head  and  heart  and  hand, 
Till  their  glorious  raid  is  o'er, 
And  they  touch  our  ransomed  shore! 
Then  the  welcome  of  a  nation. 
With  its  shout  of  exultation, 
Shall  awake  the  dumb  creation, 
And  the  shapes  of  buried  aeons 
Join  the  living  creatures'  pseans. 
Till  the  fossil  echoes  roar; 
While  the  mighty  megalosaurus 
Leads  the  palaeozoic  chorus,  — 


iS65 


399 


God  bless  the  great  Professor, 

And  the  land  his  proud  possessor,  — 

Bless  them  now  and  evermore! 

President  Eliot,  recalling  this  gathering  of  the  Club  to  wish 
Agassiz  an  affectionate  good-bye,  —  the  genial  man  sitting,  as 
usual,  at  one  end  of  the  table,  Longfellow  at  the  other,  —  said: 
"We  all  were  grieved  that  he  would  not  be  with  us  again  for  a  year. 
We  wished  him  a  successful  journey  and  drank  his  health.  Agassiz 
rose.  He  tried  to  speak,  but  could  only  manage  to  utter  two  or 
three  words  —  then  his  voice  broke,  and  he  sat  down,  the  tears 
running  down  his  cheeks." 

In  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  Number  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
Mr.  John  T.  Trowbridge  told  the  interesting  story  of  the  intro- 
duction by  Dr.  Holmes  to  the  Saturday  Club  of  a  new  poet,  from 
the  deck  of  the  famous  Hartford,  Farragut's  flagship.  This  was 
Henry  Howard  Brownell,  a  writer  of  fugitive  pieces  that  went 
the  rounds  of  the  press;  the  "Old  Cove,  or  Let  us  Alone,"  had 
pleased  the  Northern  people  during  the  winter  of  secession. 
Brownell's  metrical  version  of  the  Admiral's  general  orders  issued 
before  the  "River  Fight"  had  come  to  Farragut's  notice.  He  wrote 
to  Brownell  and  invited  him  to  come  as  his  private  secretary  on 
the  flagship,  with  the  rank  of  Ensign.  Thus  he  went  through  the 
great  Bay  Fight  in  August,  1864,  and  told  its  story  with  rugged 
truth,  and  also  with  fire  and  pathos.^ 

At  this  Club  dinner,  perhaps  in  May,  six  weeks  after  the  end 
of  the  war,  there  was  a  large  attendance.  The  guest  was  a  modest, 
self-possessed  man,  hardly  middle-aged.  After  dessert,  "Holmes 
arose,  and  Lowell  rapped  on  the  board  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
talkers.  After  some  complimentary  allusion  to  his  guest  —  who 
sat  beside  him  with  down-looking  eyes,  twirling  his  empty  wine- 
glass —  Holmes  drew  from  his  pocket  a  manuscript,  remarking 
that  he  was  to  have  the  happiness  of  reading  to  us  a  poem  by  the 
writer  who  had  shown  himself  an  unrivalled  master  in  that  class 
of  composition."  The  Doctor  said:  "The  ink  is  hardly  yet  dry  on 
it.   It  is  a  vivid  and  dramatic  picture  of  the  sinking  of  that  black, 

1  The  "Let  us  Alone"  ("Old  Cove")  and  the  "Bay  Fight"  are  both  to  be  found  in 
Emerson's  Parnassus. 


400  "The  Saturday  Club 

piratical  craft,  the  Rebellion.  ...  It  is  entitled  'Down'" — and 
the  Doctor  read  it — "every  eye  turned  upon  him  except  the 
downcast  pair  at  his  elbow  —  throwing  all  his  force  of  expression 
into  the  short  and  rugged  lines."  It  was  printed,  as  was  also  Mr. 
Trowbridge's  "Jaguar  Hunt "  —  both  of  them  Jubilee  poems  — 
in  the  Atlantic  of  June,  1865. 

In  May  another  poet  was  discovered.  Lowell  had  found  in  a 
Western  newspaper  a  war  poem,  strange  and  strong  and  touching, 
"The  Old  Sergeant."  He  was  moved  to  find  the  writer.  It  was 
signed  Forceythe  Willson,  with  no  other  clue.  He  made  inquiries, 
and  wrote  letters,  but  for  some  time  with  no  result.  Then  by 
chance  he  found  the  poet  he  sought  living  in  the  next  house  to  him 
some  two  hundred  yards  from  Elmwood,  across  Mount  Auburn 
Street.  Lowell  at  once  established  neighbourly  relations  with 
this  interesting  newcomer.  A  very  large  man,  still  young,  with 
heavy  dark  hair  and  beard  strongly  suggesting  the  bas-reliefs  of 
Assyrian  kings,  and  yet  with  a  certain  princely  courtesy  overcom- 
ing an  evident  natural  delicacy  and  shyness.^  Lowell  had  found 
that  Willson  had  a  yet  finer  war-poem,  "In  State."  ^ 

Mr.  Emerson  at  once  invited  the  new  poet  to  Concord,  and 
Mr.  Willson's  answering  letter  is  of  such  a  quality,  it  seems  worth 
while  to  give  some  sentences  here:  — 

"I  shall  not  fail  to  come.  There  have  been  flights  of  your  birds 
in  my  sky  for  several  years,  and  they  have  all  been  highly  aus- 
picious. So  I  come  to  you  with  no  misgivings  on  your  account, 
but  secretly  and  almost  selfishly  rejoicing  that  a  great  benefactor 
whom  I  have  never  yet  so  much  as  seen,  and  for  whom,  I  trust, 
I  shall  have  some  glad  tidings,  lives  right  by  my  way  and  but  a 
little  farther  on.  Already,  by  your  clean,  good  conduct  of  life, 
you  have  made  me,  I  am  sure,  both  wiser  and  better;  and  the 
consciousness  of  this  fact  illuminates  me  more  and  more  clearly 
the  nearer  I  approach  you. 

^  I  here  give  my  own  memories  of  him,  for,  hearing  from  my  father  that  he  had  a  son 
a  junior  in  College,  Mr.  Willson  at  once  invited  me  to  dine,  an  occasion  I  remember  with 
great  pleasure.  He  lived  alone  with  a  very  much  younger  brother,  being  a  widower  him- 
self. No  one  would  have  dreamed  that  he  was  to  die  —  I  think  of  consumption,  and 
in  the  next  year.  —  E.  W.  E. 

2  "The  Old  Sergeant"  and  "In  State"  were  included  by  Mr.  Emerson  in  his  collection 
Parnassus, 


i865 


401 


"But  it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much.  The  truly  generous  man- 
ner in  which  you  make  mention  of  certain  poetical  efforts  and  their 
author  has  conveyed  to  me  no  ordinary  instruction.  It  may  turn 
out  that  you  have  done  a  more  important  part  in  the  young  man's 
training  than  you  can  yet  be  aware.  But  all  these  things  will  say 
themselves  to  you  a  great  deal  more  satisfactorily  than  they  can 
be  written." 

r  July  brought  the  day,  proudly  and  sadly  joyful,  of  Harvard's 
Commemoration  of  her  honoured  dead,  and  the  gathering  back  of 
her  living  soldiers;  these  last,  of  all  ranks  from  privates  to  Gen- 
erals, greeted  one  another  in  joyous  equality,  their  proud  rela- 
tives and  their  future  wives  around  them. 

The  day  was  perfect.  A  great  awning  spread  over  the  quad- 
rangle behind  Harvard  Hall  gave  the  needed  shade.  General 
Devens  presided.  Governor  Andrew  paid  the  tribute  and  gave 
the  welcome  for  Massachusetts,  President  Hill  for  the  University, 
Major-General  Meade  spoke  for  the  Army,  and  Admiral  Davis  for 
the  Navy,  and  Mr.  Emerson  for  Scholars. 

Of  the  Reverend  Phillips  Brooks's  opening  prayer  (then)  Pro- 
fessor Charles  W.  Eliot  said:  "That  was  the  most  impressive 
utterance  of  a  proud  and  happy  day.  Even  Lowell's  'Commem- 
oration Ode'  did  not  at  the  moment  so  touch  the  hearts  of 
his  hearers.  That  one  spontaneous  and  intimate  expression  of 
Brooks's  noble  spirit  convinced  all  Harvard  men  that  a  young 
prophet  has  risen  up  in  Israel." 

Lowell's  "Ode"  was  wonderful,  far  up  on  heights  that  he  but 
rarely  reached.  He  had  tried  to  get  into  the  mood,  had  written 
portions  with  hope  followed  by  misgiving;  only  on  the  day  before 
the  occasion,  as  he  told  a  friend,  "the  whole  thing  came  out  of 
me  with  a  rush."  He  made  a  fair  copy  - — five  hundred  and  twenty- 
three  lines  —  through  the  night,  and  went  haggard  to  bed  at  dawn. 
"Virtue  enough  had  gone  out  of  me  to  make  me  weak  for  a  fort- 
night after."  This  loss,  and  the  delivery  of  the  poem  virtually  in 
the  open  air,  made  it  less  telling  on  the  moment,  but  its  noble 
lines  have  been  for  more  than  fifty  years  enshrined  in  the  memo- 
ries of  Harvard  men,  a  help  and  joyful  inspiration.  In  this  very 


402  'The  Saturday  Club 

war  to-day,  to  save  right  and  civilization  itself,  that  poem  is  a 
live  force.  ^ 

Poems  were  read  also  by  Dr.  Holmes,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe, 
and  Charles  T.  Brooks. 

Mr.  Cabot,  in  his  Memoir  of  Emerson,  quotes  Lowell's  words  as 
to  the  fitness  of  Emerson's  having  been  asked  to  speak  on  that 
occasion,  thus:  "To  him  more  than  all  other  causes  together  did 
the  young  martyrs  of  our  Civil  War  owe  the  sustaining  strength 
of  thoughtful  heroism  that  is  so  touching  in  every  record  of  their 
lives." 

Of  these  youths,  Emerson  said  in  his  short  address:  "These 
dedicated  men!  who  knew  on  what  duty  they  went,  and  whose 
fathers  and  mothers  said,  *We  gave  him  up  when  he  enlisted.' ^ 
We  see  the  dawn  of  a  new  era,  worth  to  the  world  the  lives  of  all 
this  generation  of  American  men,  if  they  had  been  demanded." 

Mr.  Paine,  the  Musical  Director  of  the  University,  conducted 
the  music,  assisted  by  the  chorus  of  the  Harvard  Musical  Associa- 
tion. 

D wight  wrote  a  "Horatian  Ode"  which  was  sung  to  Flem- 
ming's  part  song,  "Integer  Vitae,  Scelerisque  purus":  — 

"Manly  and  gentle,  pure  and  simple-hearted 
Sweet  were  their  days  of  peaceful  use  and  beauty. 
Sweeter  than  peace,  or  days  or  years  is  freedom, 

Thought  our  young  heroes.  j,  ■ 

War's  wild  alarm  drove  sleep  from  every  pillow; 
Slavery,  rampant,  stalked  athwart  the  broad  land. 
Prompt  at  the  call  of  Country  and  of  Duty, 

Flew  the  young  heroes. 
Darkly  the  clouds  hung  o'er  the  doubtful  conflict; 
^^  Out  shone  the  rainbow,  —  Liberty  to  all  Men! 

*  At  Commencement  in  19 17  Major  Henry  Lee  Higginson,  who  for  fifty  years  has  held 
before  the  generous  youth  of  Harvard  the  ideals  of  the  young  scholars  of  his  day  who 
freely  gave  their  lives  in  the  war  for  Freedom,  ended  his  short  and  strong  appeal  for 
help  in  this  even  greater  struggle,  with  the  last  five  lines  of  the  "Ode,"  so  moved  by 
the  associations  that  he  told  me  he  could  not  have  uttered  another.  —  E.  W.  E. 

"  What  were  our  lives  without  thee  ? 
What  all  our  lives  to  save  thee  ? 
We  reck  not  what  we  gave  thee; 
We  will  not  dare  to  doubt  thee. 
But  ask  whatever  else  and  we  will  dare !  " 

_  *  These  words  were  those  of  the  mother  of  Colonel  Robert  G.  Shaw  when  she  heard  of 
his  gallant  death  on  the  parapet  of  Fort  Wagner. 


i865 


403 


Lo!  now  a  Country  grand  enough  to  die  for! 

Peace  to  our  heroes! 
Rear  we  for  them  no  cold  sepulchral  marble, 
Fresh  in  our  hearts  their  very  selves  are  living, 
Dearer  and  nearer  now,  —  e'en  as  God  is  nearest, 

Risen  in  glory! 
Cease  from  thy  weeping;  rise,  O  Alma  Mater! 
Count  thy  young  heroes  tenderly  and  proudly; 
Beaming  thine  eyes,  with  holy  joy  confess  them; 

These  are  thy  children!" 

This  affectionate  occasion  —  a  day  of  pride  and  sympathy, 
mourning  and  rejoicing —  cannot  be  forgotten  by  any  one  who  was 
there,  while  memory  remains. 

Judge  Hoar,  in  a  letter  to  Lowell,  declares  his  feeling  of  grati- 
tude for  the  conditions  and  surroundings  of  his  lot  on  Earth,  and, 
praising  the  noble  "Ode,"  he  exclaims:  "What  an  occasion  that 
Commemoration  was!  My!  it  was  the  whole  war  concentrated, 
and  you  have  embalmed  its  essence  and  flavour  forever.  I  don't 
believe  there  ever  was  such  a  time  to  live  in  as  our  lifetime,  since 
the  world  was  made;  and  I  consider  falling  in  with  you  as  one 
of  the  chief  felicities  of  existence,  which  —  if  I  should  n't  go 
to  Heaven  (as  is  much  to  be  doubted)  —  will  give  great  help  in 
striking  a  comfortable  balance  of  the  total  result  of  my  creation." 

In  connection  with  the  return  of  Harvard's  sons  from  the  war, 
an  anecdote  about  Professor  Peirce  is  worth  preserving,  relating 
also  to  a  peculiarly  interesting  young  soldier.  The  examinations 
for  admission  of  a  new  class  —  to  be  the  class  of  '69  —  occurred 
within  a  few  days  of  the  Commemoration.  That  day  showed  many 
youths  maimed  in  battle,  but,  a  few  days  later,  a  young  ex- 
Confederate  Captain,  with  one  sleeve  empty,  presented  himself 
for  examination  and  was  admitted  to  the  Freshman  class.  He 
bore  one  of  the  fine  old  clan  names  of  Nova  Scotia,  but  had  early 
found  employment  in  Charleston,  and  joined  the  Militia.  He 
served  through  the  war  until  he  was  wounded  and  captured, 
having  distinguished  himself  for  gallantry  during  the  Confeder- 
ate defence  of  Fort  Sumter.  In  college,  his  quiet  demeanour,  seri- 
ous, yet  friendly,  won  increasing  respect.  His  maturer  mind,  keen 
appetite  for  knowledge,  and  remarkable  application  gave  him,  at 


404  ^he  Saturday  Club 

graduation,  the  first  place  in  his  class,  and  won  him  a  liberal  award 
from  the  University  to  continue  his  studies  the  next  year.  The 
"Captain,"  we  will  call  him,  formed  a  friendship  with  a  class- 
mate, a  high  scholar  also,  but  not,  like  him,  as  the  result  of  zeal 
and  hard  work,  for  this  friend  had  the  advantage  of  literary  back- 
ground and  was  a  thinker.  One  day  the  Captain  said  that  he  be- 
lieved that  it  was  possible  for  a  bright  and  determined  man  to  ac- 
quire all  human  knowledge  within  a  liberal  span  of  lifetime.  He 
said,  in  effect,  that  if  a  man  trains  himself  to  read^  and  to  remem- 
ber^ it  is  simply  necessary  for  him  to  seek  out  the  really  impor- 
tant books  in  which  human  knowledge  is  recorded  in  its  various 
branches.  His  friend  assured  him  that  this  was  nonsense;  but  the 
Captain  clung  to  his  hopeful  theory.  Finally,  the  disputants  agreed 
to  leave  the  decision  of  their  case  to  Professor  Peirce.  They  called 
on  him,  were  kindly  received,  and  each  stated  his  case  in  turn. 
Then  the  Master  gave  judgment  as  follows,  solving  the  ques- 
tion clearly  by  geometry:  "No.  No  man  can  acquire  all  human 
knowledge.  Knowledge  is  a  circle  with  infinitely  long  radii.  I  be- 
gan, as  we  all  do,  at  the  centre,  and  have  laboured  all  my  life, 
and  I  have  succeeded  in  progressing  an  infinitely  short  distance 
on  one  of  the  infinitely  long  radii." 

During  this  summer  a  project  for  establishing  a  sound  weekly 
journal,  loyal,  but  critical  rather  than  partizan,  in  which  Norton, 
Lowell,  Forbes,  Olmsted,  and  Ward  had  interested  themselves, 
came  to  fulfilment,  and  the  Nation,  with  Edwin  Lawrence  Godkin 
as  editor,  was  launched  on  its  notable  career. 

Early  in  October  Dr.  Holmes,  writing  an  affectionate  letter  to 
Mr.  Motley,  then  our  Minister  to  England,  says:  — 

"I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  new  attractions  which  our 
Country  will  have  for  you  will  restore  you  and  your  family  to  those 
who  grudge  your  possession  to  an  alien  capital;  and  that,  having 
stood  manfully  at  one  of  our  European  outposts  through  the  four 
years'  campaign,  you  may  wish  to  be  relieved  now  that  the  great 
danger  seems  over.  .  .  .  What  a  fine  thing  it  would  be  to  see  you 
back  at  the  Saturday  Club  again!  Longfellow  has  begun  to  come 
again.  He  was  at  his  old  place,  the  end  of  the  table,  at  our  last 
meeting. 


i865 


405 


"We  have  had  a  good  many  of  the  notabilities  here  within  the 
last  three  or  four  months.  ...  Sir  Frederick  Bruce,  the  new  Minis- 
ter, pleased  us  all.  .  .  .  White-haired,  white-whiskered,  red-cheeked, 
round-cheeked,  with  rich  dark  eyes,  hearty,  convivial,  not  afraid 
to  use  the  strengthening  monosyllable,  for  which  Englishmen  are 
famous,  pretty  freely,  outspoken  for  our  side  as  if  he  were  one  of 
us,  he  produced,  on  me  at  least,  a  very  different  effect  from  that 
of  lively  Lord  Napier,  or  plain  and  quiet  Lord  Lyons. 

"I  had  a  good  deal  of  talk  with  Grant,  whom  I  met  twice.  He 
is  one  of  the  simplest,  stillest  men  I  ever  saw.  He  seems  torpid 
at  first  and  requires  a  little  management  to  get  much  talk  out  of 
him.  Of  all  the  considerable  personages  I  have  seen,  he  appears 
to  me  to  be  the  least  capable  of  an  emotion  of  vanity.  .  .  .  He 
was  not  conscious,  he  said,  of  ever  having  acted  from  any  per- 
sonal motive  during  his  public  service.  We  (of  the  West),  he  said, 
were  terribly  in  earnest.  The  great  crisis  was  the  battle  of  Shiloh; 
that  he  would  not  lose;  he  would  have  fought  as  long  as  any  men 
were  left  to  fight  with.  If  that  had  been  lost,  the  war  would  have 
dragged  on  for  years  longer.  .  .  .  Did  he  enjoy  the  being  followed 
as  he  was  by  the  multitude.''  'It  was  very  painful.'  I  doubt  if  we 
have  had  any  idea  so  completely  realized  as  that  of  the  republi- 
can soldier  in  him.  .  .  . 

*'  I  don't  think  you  have  met  Stanton.  I  found  him  a  very  mild, 
pleasant  person  to  talk  with,  though  he  is  an  ogre  to  rebels  and 
their  Northern  friends.  .  .  . 

"Old  Farragut,  whom  I  foregathered  with  several  times,  is  the 
lustiest  gaillard  of  sixty-something  one  will  meet  with  in  the 
course  of  a  season.  ...  It  was  odd  to  contrast  him  and  Major 
Anderson.  The  Major  —  General,  I  should  say  —  is  a  conscien- 
tious, somewhat  languid,  rather  bloodless-looking  gentleman,  who 
did  his  duty  well,  but  was  overtasked  in  doing  it,  .  .  .  but  the 
old  Admirable  —  bona  fide  accident  —  let  it  stand,  is  full  of  hot 
red  blood,  jolly,  juicy,  abundant,  equal  to  anything,  and  an  extra 
dividend  of  life  left  ready  for  payment  after  the  largest  expendi- 
ture. I  don't  know  but  he  is  as  much  the  ideal  seaman  as  Grant 
the  ideal  general;  but  the  type  is  not  so  rare." 

Guests  seem  to  have  been  plenty  that  autumn.    The  Doctor 


4-o6  T^he  Saturday  Club 

goes  on:  "Mr.  Burlingame  has  come  home  from  China  on  a  visit. 
It  is  strange  what  stories  they  all  bring  back  from  the  Celestials. 
Richard  Dana,  Burlingame,  Sir  Frederick  Bruce,  all  seem  filled 
with  a  great  admiration  of  the  pigtails.  'There  are  twenty  thou- 
sand Ralph  Waldo  Emersons  in  China,'  said  Mr.  Burlingame  to 
me.  *  We  have  everything  to  learn  from  them  in  the  matter  of 
courtesy.  They  are  an  honester  people  than  Europeans.*" 

The  Doctor  goes  on  to  speak  well  of  another  future  associate  in 
the  Club:  "Mr.  Howells  from  Venice  was  here  not  long  ago.  .  .  . 
This  is  a  young  man  of  no  small  talent.  In  fact  his  letters  from 
Venice  are  as  good  travellers'  letters  as  I  remember  since  Eothen." 

It  should  be  mentioned  that  in  October  Dr.  Hedge  brought  out 
his  Reason  in  Religion,  a  notable  work  from  this  philosophic  yet 
conservative  clergyman. 

Of  the  November  Club  we  have,  through  Mrs.  Fields,  her  hus- 
band's report.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  Governor  Parsons  of 
Alabama  were  present,  and  the  Governor  had  sad  stories  to  tell 
us  of  the  suffering  and  destitution  of  the  South  and  especially  in 
his  own  State.  "Governor  Parsons  ^  has  come  North  for  the  pur- 
pose of  urging  Massachusetts  to  forgiveness  and  the  sending  of 
help  for  the  suffering  of  Alabama.  Governor  Andrew  introduced 
the  subject  and  Charles  Sumner  spoke  against  it." 

The  Club  chose  no  new  members  in  this  year. 

*  Lewis  E.  Parsons,  appointed  provisional  Governor  of  Alabama  in  June,  1865. 


Chapter  XIII 
1866 

Who,  if  he  rise  to  station  of  command. 
Rises  by  open  means ;  and  there  will  stand 
On  honourable  terms,  or  else  retire. 
And  in  himself  possess  his  own  desire. 

Wordsworth 

THESE  lines  are  suggested  by  Motley's  recall  from  his  high 
mission,  later  in  the  year.  Appropriately  to  the  leading  in 
of  Winter's  main  battle-line  by  January,  the  appearance  of  Whit- 
tier's  SnoW'Bound  may  be  mentioned;  also  Emerson's  final  versi- 
fying of  the  story  that  he  recorded  in  his  journal  a  winter  or  two 
before,  of  his  heartening-up  by  the  chickadee  when  nearly  para- 
lyzed in  the  cold  snowdrifts  in  a  winter  walk  —  on  which  poem 
Matthew  Arnold  printed  the  following  criticism:  "One  never 
quite  arrives  at  learning  what  the  titmouse  did  for  him  at  all, 
though  one  feels  a  strong  interest  and  desire  to  learn  it;  but  one 
is  reduced  to  guessing,  and  cannot  be  sure  that,  after  all,  one  has 
guessed  right." 

A  seasonable  bad  sore  throat  in  the  middle  of  the  month  kept 
Lowell  away  from  the  Dante  Club.  Longfellow  sent  him  a  bottle 
of  claret  as  a  consoling  astringent  gargle,  accompanied  by  an 
Italian  letter  (the  first  three  lines  being  a  quotation),  as  follows:  ^ 

ALL'  ILLUSTRISSIMO  SIGNOR  PROFESSORE  LOWELL 

Prescriptione  per  il  Mai  di  Gole  Prescription  for  a  Sore  Throat 

"Benedetto  "Benedight 

Quel  claretto  °  That  claret  light 

Che  si  spilla  in  Avignone."  Which  is  tapped  in  Avignone." 

Dici  Redi;  Redi  said  it; 

Se  non,  vede  Who  don't  credit, 

La  famose  sua  Canzone.  Let  him  read  the  famed  Canzone. 

^  Later,  Longfellow  rendered  his  Italian  verse  into  English,  as  given  here  in  parallel 
column. 


4-oS  The  Saturday  Club 

Questo  vino  This  same  wine 

L'  Aretino  The  Aretine 

Loda  certo  con  ragione;  Justly  praises  as  he  drinks  it; 

Ma  sta  fresco  ,    And  yet  but  poor 
Ser  Francesco  His  taste,  I  'm  sure, 

Se  '1  miglione  lo  suppone.  If  the  best  of  wines  he  thinlcs  it. 

Con  qualunque  Take  this  or  another 

Vino  dunque  (Make  no  bother)  — 

Tinto  che  dall'  uvo  cola.  Any  red  wine  in  your  bottle 

Descolato  Mixed  with  water 

Ed  acquato.  Of  any  sort  or 

Gargarizza  ben  la  gole.  Kind;  then  gargle  well  your  throttle. 

T'  assicuro  I  assure  you 

E  ti  giuro  It  will  cure  you 

(Uomo  som  di  mia  parole)  (Me  a  man  of  my  word  you  own). 
II  dolore,  Your  distress,  or 

Professore,  Pain,  Professor, 

Tutto  subito  s'  invola.  All  of  a  sudden  will  have  flown. 

Lowell  soon  reported  the  effect :  — 

Risposta  del  Signor  Professore  Answer  of  the  Professor 

Ho  provato  Quite  delighted, 

Quest'  acquato  Quick  I  tried  it. 

Vino  tinto  delle  Francia,  Your  red  wine  of  Avignon! 
E  s'  envole  When  like  a  bullet 

Dalla  gole  Out  of  my  gullet 

II  dolore  alia  pancia!  Into  my  paunch  the  pain  has  flown! 

Our  good  Governor  Andrew's  five  years'  noble  and  effective 
service  to  the  Country  was  over.  He  had  so  lavishly  spent  him- 
self in  widely  varying  and  difficult  thinking  and  working  that  his 
need  of  utter  rest  and  recreation  was  commanding.  His  law  prac- 
tice had  gone  elsewhere;  he  had  been  obliged  to  draw  upon  his 
savings;  his  need  to  provide  for  his  family  was  urgent.  What  to 
do  next  was  the  problem.  After  his  larger  work  the  thought  of 
settling  down  In  his  Boston  office  in  the  legal  harness  and  rebuild- 
ing his  practice  was  somehow  not  attractive.  He  had  a  pleasant 
thought  of  going  to  Washington,  the  centre  of  a  regenerated 
Country,  and  winning  a  practice  there;  his  age  in  years  was  only 
forty-seven,  and  naturally  he  did  not  know  how  small  was  the 


i866  409 

remnant  of  his  vitality.  Strangely  enough,  the  offer  of  the  Presi- 
dency of  Antioch  College  in  Ohio  had  an  attraction  for  him.  But 
his  many  honouring  and  devoted  friends  urged  that  Boston  must 
not  lose  him.  President  Lincoln  had  offered  him,  in  1865,  the  Col- 
lectorship  of  the  Port  of  Boston.  Andrew,  his  secretary  reports, 
said  to  a  friend,  that  it  "was  the  most  lucrative  office  in  New 
England,  and,  as  it  had  been  the  habit  to  entrust  it  to  men  who  had 
held  other  high  official  stations  and  rendered  large  public  service  for 
inadequate  pay,  he  supposed  it  was  tendered  to  him  in  accord- 
ance with  that  practice."  But  Andrew  said :  "  I  can  accept  no  such 
place  for  such  a  reason.  As  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  I  feel 
that  I  have  held  a  sacrificial  office,  that  I  have  stood  between  the 
horns  of  the  altar  and  sprinkled  it  with  the  best  blood  of  this 
Commonwealth — a  duty  so  holy  that  it  would  be  sacrilege  to 
profane  it  by  any  consideration  of  pecuniary  loss  or  gain." 

So  the  good  Governor  settled  down  to  work  in  Boston.  He  was 
thankful  for  a  commission  in  Washington  that  gave  him  much  air 
and  exercise  in  getting  about,  and  spoke  of  "this  benefit  to  my 
weak  and  half  worn-out  head,  relieving  me  of  much  of  the  pain 
which  I  had  suffered  in  my  head  and  back  for  these  last  three 
months." 

He  rallied  much,  delighted  in  having  time  for  doing  things  with 
his  children  —  to  all  children  he  was  devoted  —  and  he  had 
the  relaxation  and  refreshment  of  the  Saturday  Club  and  several 
others.  Within  the  year  he  found  that  all  the  practice  he  could 
desire  came  to  him  and  this  reassured  him  as  to  household  anxie- 
ties. He  had  some  brilliant  successes  before  the  jury  or  at  impor- 
tant legislative  hearings,  always  looking  at  things  from  a  higher 
plane,  humane,  and  brave  in  his  opinions. 

The  troubles  resulting  from  the  custom  of  having  a  compromise 
Vice-President  were  now  beginning  to  show  the  people  that  Lee's 
surrender,  and  Emancipation,  did  not  end  the  war.  The  brands  of 
the  conflagration  were  to  smoulder  for  some  years  yet. 

Emerson,  writing  of  the  power  of  manners  as  a  principal  agent 
in  human  affairs,  and  recalling  how  admirable,  in  his  youth,  ap- 
peared the  Southern  boys  in  college,  says:  "Andrew  Johnson, 
wont  to  look  up  to  the  planters  as  a  superior  race,  cannot  resist 


4IO  "The  Saturday  Club 


their  condescensions  and  flatteries,  and,  though  he  could  not  be 
frightened  by  them,  falls  an  easy  prey  to  their  caresses.  This  result 
was  foretold  by  Moncure  D.  Conway  and  Frederick  Douglass." 

In  1865,  a  month  before  the  ending  of  the  war,  which  end  he 
believed  at  hand,  Dana  had  written:  "I  see  a  generation  of  la- 
bour and  vast  problems  to  solve,  but  that  should  depress  no  man. 
To  my  mind  the  one  point  to  be  gained  by  this  war  is  the  settlement 
forever,  at  home  and  abroad,  of  the  fact  as  well  as  the  theory  that 
our  republic  is  a  government  —  in  the  philosophical  sense,  a  state 

—  created  by  the  people  of  the  Republic,  acting  directly  on  indi- 
viduals, to  which  each  citizen  owes  a  direct  allegiance  from  which 
no  power  on  earth  can  absolve  him,  and  from  which  neither  State 
nor  individual  has  any  recourse,  except  to  the  moral  right  of 
revolution.  If  this  is  left  an  open  question,  the  war  is  in  vain. 
If  it  is  settled,  the  war  is  worth  Its  cost.  In  some  respects  the 
abolition  of  slavery  assumes  larger  proportions  than  the  subject 
I  have  named.  But,  to  my  mind,  the  preservation  of  our  com- 
bined National  and  State  system  —  our  solar-planetary  system 

—  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  everything  else.  If  that  fails,  the  negro 
question,  so  far  as  it  concerns  mj,  would  be  of  little  consequence.  If 
that  succeeds,  I  think  it  will  carry  the  negro  question  with  It." 

Lowell,  in  his  last  political  article  before  the  Reconstruction  dif- 
ficulties began,  had  written:  "The  more  thought  we  bestow  on  the 
matter  we  are  more  thoroughly  persuaded  that  the  only  way  to 
get  rid  of  the  negro  is  to  do  him  justice.  Democracy  is  safe  because 
it  is  just,  and  safe  only  when  it  is  just  to  all.  Here  is  no  question  of 
black  or  white,  but  simply  of  man.  We  have  hitherto  been  strong 
in  proportion  as  we  dared  be  true  to  the  sublime  thought  of  our 
own  Declaration  of  Independence,  which  for  the  first  time  pro- 
posed to  embody  Christianity  in  human  laws,  and  announced  the 
discovery  that  the  security  of  the  state  is  based  on  the  moral  in- 
stinct and  the  manhood  of  its  members." 

Dana,  an  earnest  and  working  patriot,  yet  had  perhaps  a 
shorter  vision  than  Lowell  had  in  the  new  and  difficult  problems. 
He  held  the  position  of  District  Attorney  all  through  the  war 
period  and  until  the  work  of  reconstructing  the  conquered  South 
had  been  fully  entered  upon. 


i866  411 

After  the  war,  Mr.  Dana  occupied  ground  on  the  burning  ques- 
tion of  Reconstruction  in  the  Southern  States  between  those  of 
his  friends,  Adams  and  Sumner,  yet  strangely  enough  becoming 
nearer  to  the  extreme  views  of  the  latter  than  the  more  considered 
ones  of  the  former.  In  a  speech  in  Faneuil  Hall,  in  June,  1865, 
he  said:  "We  stand  upon  the  ground  of  war,  and  we  exercise 
the  powers  of  war.  ...  I  put  that  proposition  fearlessly.  The  con- 
quering party  may  hold  the  other  in  the  grasp  of  war,  until  it  has 
secured  whatever  it  has  a  right  to  require.''^ 

Not  sympathizing  with  President  Johnson's  policies,  Dana  had 
resigned  his  office.  He  desired  to  go  to  Congress,  but  there  being 
no  place  open  in  either  house,  he  was  chosen  a  member  of  the 
Massachusetts  House  of  Representatives  and  remained  there  two 
years,  active  and  influential.  In  his  second  year,  as  head  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee,  he  became  leader  of  the  House,  in  which 
place  his  biographer  says  he  was  less  successful,  from  his  inborn 
peculiarities,  acquiring  the  name,  among  the  more  democratic 
members,  of  "The  Duke  of  Cambridge." 

An  urgent  appeal  of  the  brave  Cretans  for  help  from  America 
came  from  William  J.  Stillman,  Consul  in  the  island  and  their  val- 
iant champion.  Dr.  Howe,  Governor  Andrew,  and  Mr.  Forbes  took 
an  active  and  practical  interest  in  the  struggle  of  that  brave  people 
against  the  cruel  Turkish  tyranny.  The  latter,  apparently  serving 
on  a  relief  committee,  writes  to  Stillman:  "Now  a  movement  is 
going  on  here  to  get  food.  I  am  a  good  deal  of  a  Sharps-rifle  Chris- 
tian and  believe  in  the  sword  of  the  flesh,  and  am  inclined  to  turn 
the  committee,  at  least  part-way,  on  to  powder  instead  of  flour." 

He  then  tells  of  the  extraordinary  cheapness  of  the  various  mili- 
tary rifles  at  this  time,  and  asks  Stillman  whether  it  is  too  late 
to  send  them. 

In  May,  Lowell  writes  to  Norton :  — • 

My  dear  Charles:  — 

I  snatch  a  moment  from  the  whirl  of  dissipation  to  bring  up 
for  you  the  annals  of  Cambridge  to  the  present  date.  In  the  first 
place,  Cranch  ^  and  his  daughters  are  staying  with  us  —  since  last 

*  Christopher  Cranch,  artist,  poet,  and  author  of  children's  stories. 


412  T^he  Saturday  Club 

Saturday.  On  that  day  I  took  him  to  the  Club,  where  he  saw  many 
old  friends  (he  has  not  been  here  for  twenty  years,  poor  fellow) 
and  had  a  good  time.  We  had  a  pleasant  time,  I  guess.  With  me 
it  was  a  business  meeting.  I  sat  between  Hoar  and  Brimmer,  that 
I  might  talk  over  college  matters.  Things  will  be  arranged  to  suit 
me,  I  rather  think,  and  the  salary  (perhaps)  left  even  larger  than 
I  hoped. 

Cranch  and  I  amuse  me  very  much.  They  read  their  poems 
to  each  other  like  a  couple  of  boys,  and  so  contrive  for  themselves 
a  very  good-natured,  if  limited,  public.  I  cannot  help  laughing  to 
myself,  whenever  I  am  alone,  at  these  rhythmical  debauches.  The 
best  of  it  is  that  there  is  always  one  at  least  who  is  never  bored. 

Just  before  moving  to  his  breezy  summer  home  at  Nahant  in 
the  midsummer,  Longfellow  writes  in  his  journal:  "June  13th.  The 
last  Dante  reading  [for  the  summer],  Lowell,  Greene,^  Holmes, 
Howells,  Furness,^  and  Forceythe  Willson.  Paradiso,  XXXHL 
A  very  pleasant  supper  which  did  not  break  up  until  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  After  it  Greene  and  I  sat  talking  in  the  study 
until  three.  The  day  was  dawning  and  the  birds  were  singing 
when  we  went  to  bed." 

In  July,  to  the  joy  of  his  friends,  Agassiz  returned  from  his 
explorations  in  Brazil.  He  had  been  most  cordially  received  by 
the  Emperor,  Dom  Pedro,  who,  on  his  uncertain  throne,  envied 
the  free  naturalist,  enjoyed  his  company,  and  took  great  interest 
in  his  work,  furthering  his  plans  and  journeyings  in  every  way 
that  was  possible.  Agassiz  explored  the  Amazons  up  to  their 
sources  in  the  mountains  of  Peru,  and,  through  his  assistants, 
collected  rare  species  of  fish  from  the  other  inland  waters. 

Here  is  the  account  given  by  Mr.  Fields  of  the  rejoicing  of  his 
friends  at  the  next  Club  meeting  which  Mrs.  Fields  wrote  down:  — 

"August  25,  1866.  Dinner  was  not  a  large  assemblage,  but 
was  the  first  since  the  return  of  Agassiz.  Agassiz  seized  Holmes  in 
his  arms  and  took  him  quite  off  his  feet.  Longfellow  was  there, 
and  told  Mr.  Fields  that  Charles  Sumner  was  really  engaged  to 

^  George  W.  Greene,  an  intimate  friend  and  constant  correspondent  of  Longfellow. 
*  Dr.  Horace  Furness,  of  Philadelphia,  the  Shaksperian  Commentator. 


i866  413 

be  married.  Agassiz  talked  much  of  the  greatness  of  Brazil,  of 
the  trees,  of  which  he  had  counted  one  hundred  and  forty-eight 
varieties  in  the  forests,  whereas  we  have  about  twenty  varieties 
in  the  forests  of  New  England  —  of  a  vast  space  there  ready  for 
enterprise. 

"Agassiz,  Longfellow,  and  Fields  went  together  as  far  as  Lynn; 
as  they  looked  from  the  car  windows  into  the  beautiful  moonlight, 
one  asked  Agassiz  if  that  were  not  as  beautiful  as  Brazil.  'Oh,' 
said  he,  'I  was  just  then  reflecting  how  sterile  is  New  England 
after  the  luxuriant  beauty  of  Brazil.'" 

To  this  we  can  fortunately  add  the  following  remarkable  account 
of  this  same  joyous  reception  by  the  Saturday  Club  of  their  loved 
and  honoured  explorer,  written  by  the  Reverend  Robert  CoUyer :  — 

"A  memory  comes  of  a  day  when  I  was  Emerson's  guest  at  the 
Saturday  Club  dinner.  Agassiz  had  just  returned  from  Brazil; 
this  was  his  first  appearance.  Lowell  was  there  and  Dr.  Holmes, 
my  dear  friend,  Mr.  James  T.  Fields  the  publisher,  and  many  old 
friends  beside,  who  when  he  [Agassiz]  came  into  the  room  joined 
hands,  made  a  ring,  and  danced  around  him  like  a  lot  of  boys, 
while  Mr.  Emerson  stood  apart,  his  face  radiant.  He  sat  at  the 
head  of  the  table.  Dr.  Holmes  sat  next  him,  and  their  talk  near 
the  end  of  the  banquet  was  of  hymns,  and  the  best.  Dr.  Holmes 
mentioned  one  I  still  hold  in  great  favour,  and  began  to  tear  it  to 
pieces  —  'It's  not  a  hymn,  but  a  piece  of  very  nice  cabinet  work 
—  the  writer  made  the  pieces  one  by  one,  glued  them  together, 
and  there  you  are';  but  then  his  voice  softened  and  took  a  deeper 
tone  as  he  said,  'There  is  one  hymn  I  count  among  the  finest  ever 
written,'  and  Mr.  Emerson  lifted  his  face  to  attention  while  the 
good  poet  chanted  the  first  sentence:  — 

'Thou  hidden  love  of  God,  whose  height, 
Whose  depth  unfathomed  no  man  knows; 

I  see  from  far  thy  beauteous  light, 
Inly  I  sigh  for  thy  repose. 

My  heart  is  pained,  nor  can  it  be 

At  rest  till  it  find  rest  in  Thee.' 

"'Yes,  yes,'  Mr.  Emerson  said  fervently,  'I  know  the  hymn  — 
it  Is  one  of  the  finest  in  our  tongue.'" 


4^4  The  Saturday  Club 

A  few  weeks  later,  Mr.  Emerson  records  in  his  journal  that  he 
visited  Agassiz,  by  invitation,  with  his  wife  and  elder  daughter, 
and  spent  the  day  at  his  house  and  on  the  Nahant  rocks.  Agassiz 
told  him:  — 

"In  Brazil  he  saw  on  a  half-mile  square  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enteen different  kinds  of  excellent  timber  —  and  not  a  saw-mill 
in  Brazil.  A  country  thirsting  for  Yankees  to  open  and  use  its 
wealth.  In  Brazil  is  no  bread;  manioca  in  pellets  the  substitute, 
at  the  side  of  your  plate.  No  society,  no  culture;  could  only  name 
three  men  —  the  Emperor,  M.  Coutinho,  and  M.  Couteo.  .  .  . 
For  the  rest,  immense  vulgarity;  and,  as  Longfellow  said,  the 
Emperor  wished  he  could  swap  places  with  Agassiz,  and  be  a 
professor  —  which  Agassiz  explained  thus,  that  the  Emperor  said, 
'Now  you,  when  you  leave  your  work,  can  always  return  into 
cultivated  society;  I  have  none.' 

"Agassiz  says,  the  whole  population  is  wretchedly  immoral, 
the  colour  and  features  of  the  people  showing  the  entire  inter- 
mixing of  all  the  races.  Mrs.  Agassiz  found  the  women  ignorant, 
depressed,  with  no  employment  but  needle-work,  with  no  future, 
negligent  of  their  persons,  shabby  and  sluttish  at  home,  with 
their  hair  about  their  ears,  only  gay  in  the  ballroom;  the  men  well 
dressed." 

On  one  occasion  Emerson  gave  a  dinner  to  Hon.  Lyulph  Stan- 
ley, who  came  with  letters  to  him,  in  Concord,  and  assembled 
as  guests  Wendell  Phillips,  Agassiz,  and  his  neighbours  EUery 
Channing,  the  whimsical  poet,  and  Alcott,  the  calm  philosopher 
—  surely  a  varied  company.  A  meeting  of  the  State  Agricultural 
Society  was  held  in  Concord  on  that  day,  and  Agassiz  had  un- 
doubtedly been  bidden  to  that  in  advance.  It  was  in  the  forenoon, 
and  Emerson  went  with  Agassiz,  recording  the  day  in  the  evening 
in  his  journal,  thus:  — 

"Agassiz  is  really  a  man  of  great  ability,  breadth,  and  resources, 
a  rare  and  rich  nature,  and  always  maintains  himself  —  in  all  com- 
panies, and  on  all  occasions.  I  carried  him  to  Mrs.  Horace 
Mann's,^  and  afterwards,  to  Bull's,^  and  in  each  house  he  gave 

^  Horace  Mann,  Jr.,  her  son,  a  naturalist,  who  died  in  his  youth,  was  then  about  to 
study  under  Agassiz  in  the  Museum. 

*  Ephraim  Wales  Bull,  the  producer  of  the  Concord  grape. 


i866  415 

the  fittest  counsel  in  the  best  way.  At  the  Town  Hall,  he  made  an 
excellent  speech  to  the  farmers,  extemporaneous,  of  course,  but 
with  method  and  mastery,  on  the  question  of  the  location  of  the 
Agricultural  College,  urging  the  claims  of  Cambridge. 

"Agassiz  thinks  that,  if  he  could  get  a  calf  elephant,  and  young 
enough,  —  that  is,  before  birth,  —  he  should  find  the  form  of  the 
mastodon;  that  if  he  could  get  a  tapir  calf  before  birth,  he  should 
find  the  form  of  the  megatherion.  But,  at  present,  these  are  prac- 
tical impossibilities,  as  they  require  hundreds  of  dissections;  hun- 
dreds, that  is,  of  live  subjects." 

Mrs.  Fields  reports  from  her  husband  on  September  29th,  1866: 
"Brillianteveningat  the  Club.  Mr.  Dana  had  just  returned.  Mr. 
Sumner  was  present  and  a  full  table.  The  guests,  beside  the  usual 
company,  were:  Mr.  Lefaveur  of  England;  Dr.  Storer  of  New 
York;  Mr.  Putnam,  publisher,  ditto;  Mr.  Samuel  Hooper,  and 
young  Wendell  Holmes.  Afterward  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Dwight, 
Le  Favre,  J.  T.  F.,  etc.,  went  in  company  to  hear  Parepa.  O.  W.  H. 
said,  'Oh,  yes,  let  us  go.  I  hate  to  have  an  odd  end  of  an  evening 
left  over,'  —  'As  if  it  were  an  old  cigar,'  Mr.  Fields  added. 

"Agassiz  said,  after  being  questioned  whether  the  dodo  was 
good  to  eat:  'Yes,  indeed,'  he  replied.  'What  a  peety  we  could 
not  have  the  dodo  at  our  Club.  A  good  dinner  is  humanity's  great- 
est blessing.  What  a  peety  the  Dutchman  carried  a  ship  with  rats 
to  Mauritius  which  sucked  the  eggs  of  the  dodo,  as  large  as  a  loaf, 
and  everybody  found  the  bird  himself  so  good  they  did  eat  him, 
so  they  have  become  extinct.  We  know  of  but  one  other  bird  of  re- 
cent date,  who  has  become  extinct,  the  Northern  Hawk.  The  Bishop 
of  Newfoundland  did  send  me  his  bones  —  a  great  treasure.' " 

A  story  must  here  be  introduced  —  I  forget  its  source  —  of  an 
occasion  when  an  enterprising  reporter  contrived  to  get  to  the  din- 
ing-room door,  probably  while  the  Club  was  gathering,  and  asked 
to  speak  with  Dr.  Holmes.  On  his  appearance  the  reporter  began 
his  eff'orts  to  pump  him  as  to  the  customs  and  methods  of  pro- 
cedure. The  Doctor  promptly  interrupted  him,  saying,  "We  do 
nothing  but  tell  our  old  stories,"  and  rejoined  the  company. 

Another  incident  must  also  find  a  place  in  this  year's  story,  so 
characteristic  is  it  of  our  manly  and  patriotic  merchant,  Forbes. 


4^6  T^he  Saturday  Club 

About  this  time,  a  Mr.  Springer,  of  Illinois,  having  observed  that 
Mr.  Forbes  paid  a  very  large  tax,  wrote  asking  him  to  join  him  in 
contesting  the  validity  of  the  Acts  of  Congress  under  which  the 
income  tax  was  imposed.   The  answer  was  as  follows :  — 

Sir,  —  I  have  not  been  fighting  the  Rebels  for  five  years  to  be- 
gin now  and  cooperate  with  you  in  attacking  the  credit  of  our 
Country.   I  decline  your  offer.  Your  ob't  servant, 

J.  M.  Forbes. 

Mr.  Howells,  living  in  Cambridge,  published  this  year  his 
Venetian  Life.  Motley  was  working  at  his  History  of  the  United 
Netherlands  in  Vienna.  Mr.  Fields  in  this  year,  as  for  some  years 
before  and  after,  was  conducting  the  Atlantic  genially  and  success- 
fully, always  in  pleasant  relation  with  the  contributors,  who  often 
met  one  another  for  the  first  time  at  his  hospitable  table,  where 
Mrs.  Fields  presided  so  gracefully.  Whipple  and  Fields  in  this 
year  edited  the  Family  Library  of  British  Poets  from  Chaucer  to 
the  Present  Time.  Whipple,  like  Emerson,  gave  a  course  of  lec- 
tures every  winter,  later  to  be  pruned  and  polished  Into  essays. 

An  early  and  strong  friendship  was  that  between  Lowell  and 
Judge  Hoar.  Lowell  dedicated  his  new  volume,  the  second  series 
of  Biglow  Papers,  to  his  friend:  "A  very  fit  thing  it  seems  to  me," 
he  said,  "for  of  all  my  friends  he  is  the  most  genuine  Yankee." 
This  compliment  the  Judge  thus  acknowledged:  — 

Concord,  November  3,  1866. 
My  dear  James,  —  I  desire  reverently  to  express  my  profound 
sense  of  obligation.  I  am  handed  down  to  posterity.  Immortality 
is  secure.  An  attache  to  some  splendid  embassy  —  a  poor  plodding 
pedestrian  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  receiving  a  "lift"  that 
takes  him  to  his  journey's  end  —  a  donation  visit  to  a  country 
minister  —  comparisons  fail  me! 

During  this  year  a  grievous  wrong  was  done  to  one  of  our  mem- 
bers, and,  through  this  action,  to  the  Country  which  he  was  serv- 
ing with  loyalty  and  distinction  —  the  recall  of  Motley.  Dr. 
Holmes,  in  his  memoir  of  his  friend,  tells  the  disgraceful  story  in 
full.   The  main  facts  are  these:  — 


i866  417 

The  President,  Andrew  Johnson,  received  a  letter  from  an  un- 
known person,  dated  in  October,  in  Paris,  signed  "George  W. 
McCrackin,  of  New  York."  It  was  full  of  accusations  of  various 
Ministers,  Consuls,  and  others  representing  the  United  States. 
"Its  language  was  coarse,  its  assertions  improbable,  its  spirit 
that  of  the  lowest  of  party  scribblers.  It  was  bitter  against  New 
England,  especially  so  against  Massachusetts,  and  it  singled  out 
Motley  for  particular  abuse."  A  paragraph  appeared  three  years 
later  in  the  Daily  Advertiser  quoting  a  Western  paper  to  the  effect 
that  a  William  R.  McCracken  had  died,  and  had  confessed  to  hav- 
ing written  that  letter.  Motley,  he  said,  had  [snubbed  him  and 
refused  to  lend  him  money.  The  writer  of  this  paragraph  added, 
"He  appears  to  have  been  a  Bohemian  of  the  lowest  sort."  This 
letter  of  "McCrackin"  was  passed  on  into  the  hands  of  Seward, 
Secretary  of  State,  who  at  once  acted  on  the  President's  sugges- 
tion, wrote  a  formal  note  to  several  of  the  accused  officials,  quot- 
ing some  of  the  writer's  assertions  of  what  they  had  said,  and  ask- 
ing them  whether  they  had,  or  had  not,  thus  spoken.  Dr.  Holmes 
holds  that  any  self-respecting  private  gentleman  might  well  won- 
der who  could  send  such  queries,  whether  he  had  spoken  in  a 
"malignant"  or  "offensive"  manner  against  the  President,  or 
"railed  shamefully"  against  him;  "but  it  was  a  letter  of  this  kind 
which  was  sent  by  the  Secretary  of  State  to  the  Minister  Pleni- 
potentiary to  the  Empire  of  Austria." 

The  high-spirited  Motley  instantly  replied.  As  to  his  American 
feelings  he  appeals  to  his  record  (his  brave  unofficial  services  in 
England,  to  enlighten  hostile  or  ignorant  public  opinion  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  should  be  recalled) ;  he  denounces  the 
accusations,  and  blushes  that  they  should  have  been  uttered,  or 
considered  possible;  but  he  does  not  hesitate  to  say  with  regard  to 
what  his  private  opinions  are  on  home  questions,  and  especially 
on  Reconstruction.  "These,  in  the  privacy  of  my  own  household 
and  to  occasional  American  visitors,  I  have  not  concealed.  The 
great  question  now  presenting  itself  for  solution  demands  the  con- 
scientious scrutiny  of  every  American  who  loves  his  Country 
and  believes  in  the  human  progress  of  which  that  Country  is  one 
of  the  foremost  representatives.  I  have  never  thought,  during  my 


4 1 8  "The  Saturday  Club 

residence  at  Vienna,  that  because  I  have  the  honour  of  being  a 
public  servant  of  the  American  people  I  am  deprived  of  the  right 
of  discussing  within  my  own  walls  the  gravest  subjects  that  can 
interest  freemen.  A  Minister  of  the  United  States  does  not  cease 
to  be  a  citizen  of  the  United  States  as  deeply  interested  as  others 
in  all  that  relates  to  the  welfare  of  his  Country." 

Thus  he  denied  the  charges,  claimed  his  right,  and  tendered  his 
resignation.  Secretary  Seward  wrote  that  "his  answer  was  satis- 
factory"; but  the  President,  on  reading  over  the  last  paragraph 
of  Motley's  letter  (in  which  he  begged  respectfully  to  resign  his 
post),  without  waiting  to  learn  what  Seward  proposed  to  do,  ex- 
claimed, "Well,  let  him  go!"  and  Seward  did  not  read  to  him,  or 
send,  the  despatch  which  he  had  written  to  Motley. 

Motley,  however,  highly  esteemed  in  Austria  and  in  Holland 
as  statesman  and  scholar,  pursued  his  literary  studies,  and  did 
not  return  to  America  until  June,  1868. 

As,  early  in  the  year,  so  in  its  last  month,  Longfellow  was  urg- 
ing Sumner  to  be  the  champion  of  justice  and  comity  in  procuring 
the  passage  of  a  law  of  international  copyright  which  had  long 
been  sorely  needed. 

Longfellow  received  from  the  Italian  Charge  d'Affaires  in 
Washington  the  announcement  that  King  Victor  Emmanuel  had, 
with  high  compliments  for  his  talents,  conferred  upon  him  the 
grade  of  Cavaliere  in  his  order  of  Saints  Maurezio  and  Lazzaro. 
Longfellow,  acknowledging  the  letter  with  all  courtesy  wrote:  — 

"  If,  as  an  American  citizen,  a  Protestant,  and  Republican,  I 
could  consistently  accept  such  an  Order  of  Knighthood,  there  is 
no  one  from  whom  I  would  more  willingly  receive  it  than  from  the 
Restorer  of  the  Unity  of  Italy  —  a  sacred  cause  which  has,  and 
always  has  had,  my  most  sincere  and  fervent  sympathy. 

"  I  trust,  therefore,  that  you  will  not  regard  it  as  the  slight- 
est disrespect  either  to  your  Sovereign  or  to  yourself,  if,  under 
these  circumstances,!  feel  myself  constrained  to  decline  the  honour 
proposed. 

"  With  expressions  of  great  regard  and  consideration,  I  remain, 

"Your  obedient  servant." 


i866  419 

For  thirty  years  Mr.  Emerson  had  had  it  in  mind  "to  write 
the  Natural  History  of  Reason."  This  year  he  put  together  some 
of  his  notes  "dotting  a  fragmentary  curve  of  isolated  observations 
on  the  Natural  Method  of  Mental  Phenomena,"  without  dogma- 
tism. The  course  was  announced  in  the  autumn.  Mr.  James  was 
much  amused  and,  writing  to  Mrs.  Fields,  asked  in  a  postscript: 
"Who  contrived  the  comical  title  for  E.'s  lectures.'*  —  'Philosophy 
of  the  People ' !  May  it  not  have  been  a  joke  of  J.  T.  F.'s  \  It  would 
be  no  less  absurd  for  Emerson  himself  to  think  of  philosophizing 
than  for  the  rose  to  think  of  botanizing.  He  is  the  divinely  pom- 
pous rose  of  the  philosophic  garden,  gorgeous  with  colour  and  fra- 
grance; so  what  a  sad  lookout  for  tulip  and  violet  and  lily,  and 
the  humbler  grasses,  if  the  rose  should  turn  out  philosophic  gar- 
dener as  well." 

In  this  year  Dr.  Jeffries  Wyman  was  chosen  a  member  of  the 
Club. 


JEFFRIES  WYMW 

Ix  the  pleasant  village  of  Chelmsford,  Jeffries  Wyman  was  born 
in  August,  1 8 14.  His  father  was  a  country  doctor  of  such  char- 
acter, skill,  and  good  repute  that  when,  in  his  later  years,  the 
McLean  Asylum  for  the  Insane  was  established  in  Somerville  he 
was  chosen  as  Resident  Physician.  The  active  country  boy  was 
eagerly  searching  for  creatures  and  specimens,  and  learning  facts 
such  as  interested  him  in  Chelmsford  woods  and  along  the  Merri- 
mac.  He  was  sent  to  Exeter  Academy,  where  he  did  not  shine  in 
the  prescribed  studies;  but  the  boys  were  interested  in  him  and 
his  collections.  The  Harvard  curriculum  of  classics  and  mathe- 
matics with  elementary  courses  in  chemistry  and  natural  phi- 
losophy did  not  afford  much  grist  to  his  mill,  though  in  class  or  in 
the  field  or  the  library  he  knew  what  was  for  him.  It  is  interesting 
to  know  that  he  graduated  number  fifty  in  a  class  of  fifty-three. 
Of  course  the  Medical  School  gave  him  the  opportunities  that  he 
naturally  desired.  Dr.  John  Collins  Warren  made  him  his  Demon- 
strator of  Anatomy.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  a  good 
one.  W}Tiian  took  his  degree  as  Doctor  of  Medicine  in  1837.  Dur- 
ing his  medical  studies,  and  perhaps  in  the  years  immediately 
following,  the  youth  eked  out  his  slender  resources  by  becoming 
a  member  of  the  Boston  Fire  Department,  was  noted  for  his 
prompt  answer  in  person  to  the  alarm,  and  "ran  with  the  old  tub." 
Though  poor  he  was  cheerful  and  independent.  He  cared  for  sci- 
entific investigation  and  seemed  to  have  practised  his  profession 
for  a  very  short  time,  or  not  at  all. 

Research  work  is  not  "paying,"  in  the  common  use  of  the  word, 
though  a  Wyman  or  an  Agassiz  believed  such  a  life  profitable 
to  the  world  and  delightful  to  him  who  pursues  it.  Material  and 
apparatus  make  it  a  source  of  expense.  Fortunately  Wyman's 
fertile  mind  and  delicate  and  skilful  hand  devised  and  made  what 
he  needed.  Once  wishing  to  demonstrate  to  his  audience  in 
a  large  hall  an  exceedingly  delicate  movement — the  ciliary  mo- 
tion, like  waving  rye,  of  the  microscopic  epithelium  of  a  frog's 


^ 


yeffries  W^yman  421 

windpipe  —  he  contrived  a  cunning  instrument  that  made  the 
motion  visible  to  all.  Wyman  early  established  a  name  in  the 
scientific  world  by  his  published  contributions  of  papers,  clear  and 
novel.  Friends  of  Dr.  Rufus  Wyman,  after  his  death,  already 
recognizing  his  son's  calibre,  and  aware  of  his  very  limited  means, 
gladly  and  unasked  gave  pecuniary  aid,  which  he,  recognizing  it 
as  a  contribution  to  Science,  not  to  him,  simply  accepted. 

Two  years  after  taking  his  medical  degree,  Wyman  was  chosen 
Curator  of  the  Lowell  Institute,  and  the  following  year  lectured 
there.  The  gift  from  his  father's  friends  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  go  abroad  and  follow  the  lectures  of  the  great  physiologists  in 
Paris,  and  in  London  to  hear  Owen  and  study  his  collections  of 
comparative  anatomy.  It  was  not  merely  dry  bones  that  Wyman 
cared  for;  it  was  rather  vital  processes  and  the  advances  made 
by  living  organisms  through  adaptation. 

Soon  after  his  return  from  Europe  Wyman  was  called  to  teach 
Anatomy  in  Richmond,  Virginia.  After  four  years,  he  returned 
to  Cambridge  to  fill  the  position  of  Hersey  Professor  of  Anatomy 
in  the  Medical  School.  Wherever  he  went  his  keen  eyes  were  open 
for  specimens  for  his  growing  collection  of  comparative  anatomy, 
or,  better,  zoology. 

Dr.  Wyman  was  tall  and  slender;  his  look  bespoke  him  a  scholar 
rather  than  an  athlete,  though  his  eye  was  quick  and  his  motions 
alert.  His  devotion  to  his  experiments  whether  with  scalpel, 
microscope,  or  chemical  reagents,  or  coarser  bone-boiling,  kept 
him  too  long  indoors  under  unhealthy  conditions.  This  resulted 
in  lung  threatenings,  and  southward  winter  excursions,  with  his 
eager  collecting,  became  essential  to  him.  Mr.  John  M.  Forbes 
invited  him  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  join  him  in  a  refreshing 
hunting  trip.  Walking  along  the  banks  of  the  great,  gleaming 
St.  John's  River  they  came  suddenly  on  a  huge  alligator  dozing. 
Mr.  Forbes  fired,  and  at  close  range.  The  monster,  though  badly 
wounded,  started  for  his  native  element,  but  a  few  feet  away, 
below  the  steep  bank.  In  an  instant  Wyman  was  astride  of 
him,  probably  behind  the  forelegs,  and  just  as  he  was  reaching 
the  edge,  drove  his  hunting-knife  between  the  scales,  and  with 
anatomist's  security,  between  the  base  of  the  skull  and  the  first 


42  2  'The  Saturday  Club 

vertebra,  instantly  severing  the  medulla  oblongata^  the  vital 
nexus.  Exact  knowledge  was  safety  and  power.  He  knew  just 
how  far  the  furious  sweep  of  the  tail  could  reach.  At  Wyman's 
lectures  we  used  to  see  the  great  skeleton,  suspended  aloft,  of  the 
dragon,  but  the  Saint  George  never  mentioned  the  fight.  Years 
afterward  Mr.  Forbes  told  me  the  story.  On  this  occasion  Wyman 
began  the  investigation  of  the  Florida  shell-heaps.  Mr.  Robert 
Bennet  Forbes,  the  younger  of  the  brothers,  on  another  occasion 
took  Dr.  Wyman,  and,  I  think,  Mr.  George  Peabody,  on  his  yacht 
to  the  Antilles  and  the  northern  shore  of  South  America  where 
Surinam  toads,  their  infants  in  pouches  on  their  backs,  and 
"jiggers,"  and  huge  constrictors  or  small  venomous  serpents 
could  be  dissected  or  bottled.  Most  careful  observation  of  the 
life-history  and  modes  of  function  of  all  these  creatures  preceded 
the  minute  study  of  their  structure.  So  Wyman's  knowledge  and 
collections  grew  apace.  But  where  to  put  them  was  the  question. 
He  bided  his  time. 

In  these  days,  Pouchet,  of  Rouen,  had  startled  Science,  resting 
assured  in  the  doctrine  Omne  vivum  ah  ovo,  by  his  Theorie  positive 
de  r ovulation  spontanee,  which  stirred  to  investigation  the  young 
peasant-born  Pasteur,  who  had  just  taken  his  degree.  Between 
these  champions  an  honourable  contest  began.  For  years  each 
capped  the  other's  latest  experiment  by  one  with  more  subtle  pre- 
cautions against  error.  Wyman  himself  began  experimenting,  as 
always,  with  open  mind  and  great  technical  ingenuity.  In  the  end 
he  found  that  in  his  sterilized  liquids  no  signs  of  organic  life  would 
appear,  however  long  they  were  kept,  if  properly  sealed,  and  after- 
wards boiled  for  five  consecutive  hours,  and  his  independent  re- 
search confirmed  Pasteur's  result. 

Meantime  Darwin's  unorthodox  theories  had  startled  not  only 
the  religious,  but  the  naturalists.  Wyman  read  them  with  interest 
the  more  keen  because  of  his  own  remarkable  knowledge  of  com- 
parative anatomy,  its  foreshadowings,  tendencies;  also  its  super- 
fluous relics  of  organs  once  needed. 

At  the  college,  he  gave,  at  this  period,  a  course  (elective)  on 
Comparative  Anatomy,  but  he  fortunately  construed  his  office  so 
liberally  that  Comparative  Physiology  was  included,  and  he  gave 


yeffries  W^yman  423 

to  us  students  of  that  day,  who  had  no  knowledge  of  the  animal 
structure  and  function,  not  only  the  elements  in  a  most  interesting 
way,  but  a  brief  and  clear  account  of  the  state  of  the  contest  on 
both  battle-fields  of  the  day,  namely,  that  of  generation  and  of 
evolution.  The  evidence  from  experiment  of  each  contestant  was 
fairly  given.  He  liked  to  have  us  come  down  and  question  him 
after  the  lecture  —  an  unknown  occurrence  in  any  other  class- 
room—  and  it  was  natural  that  we  should  say,  "And  what  do 
you  believe.'"'  (having  heard  how  hotly  Agassiz  opposed  Darwin's 
teaching);  but  he  always  said  with  quiet  modesty,  "The  evidence 
is  not  all  in.  We  must  suspend  judgment  until  it  is,  and  hold  our 
minds  open." 

Our  good  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  orthodox  church  member  as  he  was, 
had  great  respect  for  this  admirable  man  of  science.  In  a  letter 
to  Darwin  he  calls  him  "my  crony,  Wyman,"  and  says:  "You 
should  study  Wyman's  observations  in  his  own  papers.  He  is 
always  careful  to  keep  his  inferences  close  to  his  facts,  and  is  as 
good  an  experimenter,  I  judge,  as  he  is  an  observer.  ...  I  think 
he  has  not  at  all  pronounced  in  favour  of  spontaneous  generation, 
but  I  will  bet  on  his  experiments  against  Pasteur  any  day."  Of 
course  this  referred  to  his  ingenuity  and  skill,  not  to  partizanship. 

The  good  Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch,  a  man  of  a  very  different 
type  from  Wyman,  impulsive  to  rashness,  demonstrative,  a  born 
reformer,  came  upon  him  in  the  Saranac  wilds.  Yet  they  met  on 
common  ground.  He  wrote :"  The  woods !  They  are  the  elixir  of 
life  for  me,  and  I  was  thankful  to  meet  Dr.  Jeffries  Wyman  here, 
among  the  wilds,  for  the  same  object  as  myself,  namely,  not  for 
*  sport,'  but  for  communion  with  Nature.  He  is  now  at  a  pretty 
camp,  where  he  passed,  three  years  since,  one  of  the  happiest 
weeks  of  his  life  with  his  wife,  who  recently  died.  .  .  .  He  is  alone 
with  one  guide.  ...  I  like  him.  He  is  learned,  and  loves  truth. 
He  is  free,  and  is  no  bigot,  though  a  deeply  religious  man.  I  never 
meet  him  but  I  think  it  a  Godsend;  the  moral  and  intellectual 
qualities  are  both  so  highly  trained,  and  he  is  such  a  fund  of 
information.  He  has  counted  no  less  than  forty  species  of  birds 
around  his  camp.  He  is  quietly  studying  the  sand-waves  as  they 
roll  upon  his  little  beach,  and  argues  back  from  them  to  the  ripple- 


424  "The  Saturday  Club 

marks  of  ancient  sandstone.  He  has  measured  the  largest,  or 
among  the  largest  of  boulders  in  the  known  world,  now  resting 
on  the  shores  of  the  lake.  .  .  .  Finally  and  naturally,  we  turned 
from  nature  to  the  God  of  nature,  and  we  discoursed  on  the  tend- 
ency of  modern  materialistic  philosophy  to  refer  all  force  to  the 
sun.  ...  I  was  glad  he  agreed  with  me  as  to  the  utter  folly  of 
stopping  short  at  any  bound,  save  the  Invisible  Living  God." 

A  few  years  later,  Mr.  Emerson  had  the  opportunity  of  acquaint- 
ance with  Wyman  in  the  same  region,  the  camp  on  Follansbee 
Pond.   He  sketched  him  in  his  notebook  thus :  — 

JEFFRIES  WYMAN 

Science  and  sense 
Without  pretence, 
He  did  what  he  essayed. 
His  level  gun  will  hit  the  white, 
His  cautious  tongue  will  speak  the  right, 
Of  that  be  none  afraid. 

Stillman,  of  course,  knew  him  at  the  camp.  He  says :  "Amongst 
the  evolutionists  whom  I  have  known  there  have  been  several 
who  did  not  accept  without  modification  the  theory  of  natural 
selection,  and  supplemented  it  by  design,  amongst  whom  I  may 
mention  the  great  American  botanist,  Asa  Gray,  —  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  of  Darwinians,  —  who  accepted  the  method 
of  evolution  as  the  modus  operandi  of  the  Supreme  Intelligence. 
Professor  Jeffries  Wyman,  the  associate  of  Agassiz  in  the  Uni- 
versity, who  was  one  of  the  doctors  of  our  Adirondack  company, 
accepted  in  a  qualified  manner  the  theory  of  evolution,  but  his 
premature  and  lamented  death  set  the  seal  to  his  conclusions 
before  they  were  complete,  though  I  have  always  had  the  impres- 
sion that  his  position  was  similar  to  that  of  Gray.  To  my  question 
one  day  as  to  his  conclusions,  he  replied,  —  with  a  caution  char- 
acteristic of  the  man,  and  very  unlike  the  resolute  attitude  of 
Agassiz  before  the  question  which  the  Sphinx  proposes  still,  — 
'An  evolution  of  some  sort  there  certainly  was,'  but  nothing  more 
would  he  say.  The  loss  to  American  Science  in  his  death  can  never 
be  estimated,  for  his  mind  was  of  that  subtle  and  inductive  nature 
which  is  needed  for  such  study,  fine  to  poetic  delicacy,  penetrating 


yeffries  TVyman  425 

with  all  the  acumen  of  a  true  scientific  imagination,  but  modest 
to  excess,  and  personally  so  attached  to  Agassiz  that  he  would  with 
reluctance  give  expression  to  a  difference  from  him,  though  that 
he  did  differ  was  no  occasion  for  abatement  of  their  mutual  regard. 
Wyman's  was  the  poetry  of  scientific  research,  Agassiz's  its  prose, 
and  they  offered  a  remarkable  example  of  mental  antithesis,  from 
which,  had  Wyman  lived,  much  might  have  been  expected  through 
their  association  in  study.  Wyman  had  all  the  delicacy  of  a  fine 
feminine  organization,  wedded  unfortunately  to  a  fragile  consti- 
tution, but  the  friendship  he  held  for  the  robust  and  dominating 
character  of  the  great  Switzer  was  to  the  utmost  reciprocated. 
And  Agassiz's  disposition  was  as  generous  as  large.  He  had  abso- 
lutely no  scientific  jealousy  or  sectarian  feeling." 

At  about  the  time  when  the  Civil  War  began,  the  friendly  doc- 
tors, Wyman  and  Weir  Mitchell,  were  investigating  serpent- 
poison  with  no  purpose,  beyond  pure  science,  than  beneficence. 
No  venom  was  used  in  denunciation  by  Wyman  at  that  excited 
period;  he  only  laments  the  secession  of  Virginia,  in  a  letter  to 
Mitchell,  "because  we  have  both  lost  our  easiest  supply  of  rattle- 
snakes." He  congratulates  himself  that  he  still  had  the  bullfrog,^ 
and  regrets  that  the  rattlesnakes  had  not  been  allowed  to  vote 
on  the  question  of  secession. 

No  one  of  us  undergraduates  who  attended  Wyman's  course, 
so  impersonally  and  modestly  given,  with  ingenious  yet  simplest 
original  experiments,  failed  to  be  interested.  "Symmetry  and 
Homology  in  Animal  Structure"  did  not  sound  exciting.  Yet 
when  this  master  showed  us  prevailing  right-and-left  symmetry 
and  also,  in  some  low  articulates,  a  fore-and-aft  symmetry  as 
perfect  as  was  possible  and  yet  have  the  organism  not  paralyzed 
through  having  a  captain  at  each  end,  —  that  stirred  us.  But 
when  he  threw  some  iron-filings  on  a  thin  sheet  of  pasteboard  with 
a  straight  magnet  beneath  it,  then  tapped  the  pasteboard  gently 
and  the  filings  sprang  into  a  complete  symmetry  on  each  side  of 
the  long  axis,  never  crossing  it;  and  into  two  centres  of  arrange- 

^  The  bullfrog,  because  of  Its  size,  was  much  valued  for  animal  experimentation.  No 
such  large  frog  is  found  in  Europe,  and  Agassiz  obtained  a  great  many  valuable  contribu- 
tions from  foreign  savants  for  his  Museum  in  exchange  for  large  consignments  of  bullfrogs. 


426 


"The  Saturday  Club 


ment,  fore  and  aft  of  the  transverse  axis,  suggesting  the  shoulder- 
and  the  pelvic-girdles  with  fore-  and  hind-leg  suggestions,  and 
perhaps  a  tendency  to  round  into  a  head  at  each  end  —  that 
thrilled  us.  It  was  to  us  what  has  been  called  the  "I  see!" 
method,  making  us  take  the  leap  to  a  conclusion.  But  the 
master  quietly  said  that  this  was  interesting  and  suggestive.    He 

then  took  a  Y-shaped  mag- 
net and  repeated  the  exper- 
iment. Instantly  we  had 
the  sketch  of  the  "  Ritta 
Christina  monstrosity"— 
twin  babies  with  but  one 
pair  of  legs  and  separated 
into  individuals  above  the 
pelvis. 

Wyman's  scientific  pa- 
pers —  always  reports  of 
original  observations  stat- 
ed with  beautiful  clearness, 
never  contentious,  never 
with  hasty  generalizations 
—  were  abundant  and  re- 
ceived with  respect  in  Eu- 
rope as  here.  His  pupil, 
Dr.  Wilder,  speaking  of  his 
patient  caution  in  judging 
any  theory  founded  on  what  seemed  new  indications,  says:  "His 
statements  were  always  received  as  gospel  by  both  parties  to  a 
controversy.  He  might  not  tell  the  whole  truth,  for  he  might  not 
see  it  at  the  time,  but  what  he  did  tell  was  nothing  but  the  truth 
so  far  as  it  went.  He  did  not  allow  his  imagination  to  outstrip 
his  observation." 

In  1866,  Mr.  George  Peabody,  whom  Dr.  Holmes  called,  "The 
friend  of  all  his  race  —  God  bless  him!"  endowed  the  Museum 
of  American  Archaeology,  having  particular  reference  to  the  an- 
tiquities illustrating  the  history  of  the  aborigines  of  America. 
Wyman,  who  had  himself  made  extensive  researches  in  this  field, 


yeffries  TVyman  427 

was  seen  to  be  the  one  man  for  its  Curator.  Dr.  Holmes  thus  tells 
of  his  zeal  and  ingenuity:  "How  many  skulls,  broken  so  as  to 
be  past  praying  for,  he  has  made  whole;  how  many  Dagons,  or 
other  divinities,  shattered  past  praying  to,  he  has  restored  entire 
to  their  pedestals,  let  the  myope  who  can  find  the  cracks  where  his 
cunning  hand  has  joined  the  fragments  tell  us.  His  manipulation 
of  a  fractured  bone  from  a  barrow  or  a  shell-heap  was  as  wonder- 
ful in  its  way  as  the  dealing  of  Angelo  Mai  with  the  scraps  of  a 
tattered  palimpsest." 

On  one  occasion  Dr.  Wyman,  accompanied  by  Elliot  Cabot, 
came  up  to  Concord  to  examine  a  spot  on  a  bluif  above  the  Mus- 
ketaquid  where,  just  below  the  thin  turf,  rather  extensive  layers 
of  charcoal  and  calcined  mussel-shells  show  long-repeated  Indian 
feasts.  It  especially  interested  the  Doctor  because,  at  that  time, 
it  was  the  only  "shell-heap"  which  he  had  seen  where  the  in- 
sipid fresh-water  mussel  formed  the  fish  course  of  the  banquet  — 
possibly  it  was  on  an  Indian  "day  of  fasting,  humiliation,  and 
prayer."  As  we  dug  with  hoes  or  fingers  along  the  edge  of  the 
bluff,  Dr.  Wyman  picked  up  a  brown,  moulded,  triangular  ob- 
ject resembling  a  bit  of  decayed  knot  of  wood.  Instantly,  "Ulna 
of  a  deer!"  exclaimed  he;  then,  blushing  like  a  girl,  as  if  he  had 
been  "showing  off,"  he,  as  it  were,  apologized  to  me  by  saying, 
"They  seem  to  have  been  a  tit-bit.  I  often  find  them  in  shell- 
heaps."  It  was  an  incident  characteristic  of  his  ready  knowledge 
and  modesty. 

Dr.  Holmes  paid  this  high  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Wyman: 
"His  word  would  be  accepted  on  a  miracle."  Of  the  latter  years  of 
his  friend  he  said:  "So  he  went  on  working  .  .  .  quietly,  happily, 
not  stimulated  by  loud  applause,  not  striking  the  public  eye  with 
any  glitter  to  be  seen  afar  oflf,  but  with  a  mild  halo  about  him, 
which  was  as  real  to  those  with  whom  he  had  his  daily  walk  and 
conversation  as  the  nimbus  round  a  saint's  head  in  an  altar-piece." 

His  strength  gradually  ebbed,  and  he  died  at  Bethlehem,  New 
Hampshire,  September  4,  1874,  having  just  completed  his  sixtieth 
year. 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  XIV 
1867 

We  know  the  arduous  strife,  the  eternal  laws 
To  which  the  triumph  of  all  good  is  given. 
High  sacrifice,  and  labour  without  pause. 
Even  to  the  death:  else  wherefore  should  the  eye 
Of  man  converse  with  immortahty? 

Wordsworth 

IN  Longfellow's  Memoir,  by  his  brother,  is  recorded:  "On  New 
Year's  Day  Longfellow  was  greeted  by  a  letter  from  Tennyson 
with  these  pleasant  words:  'We  English  and  Americans  should  all 
be  brothers  as  none  other  among  nations  can  be;  and  some  of  us, 
come  what  may,  will  always  be  so,  I  trust.'" 

Mr.  Fields's  record  shows  a  scant  attendance  at  the  first  Club 
dinner  of  the  year.  Mr.  Lincoln,  then  Mayor  of  Boston,  was  hie 
guest,  whom  he  speaks  of  as  "a  capital  mayor  and  a  gentleman." 

On  the  27th  of  February,  Longfellow's  sixtieth  birthday,  Lowell 
brought  and  read  this  tribute :  — 

"I  need  not  praise  the  sweetness  of  his  song, 
Where  limpid  verse  to  limpid  verse  succeeds 
Smooth  as  our  Charles,  when,  fearing  lest  he  wrong 
The  new  moon's  mirrored  skiif,  he  slides  along, 
Full  without  noise,  and  whispers  in  his  reeds. 

"With  loving  breath  of  all  the  winds  his  name 
Is  blown  about  the  world,  but  to  his  friends 
A  sweeter  secret  hides  behind  his  fame, 
And  Love  steals  shyly  through  the  loud  acclaim 
To  murmur  a  God  bless  you  !  and  there  ends. 

"As  I  muse  backward  up  the  checkered  years 
Wherein  so  much  was  given,  so  much  was  lost, 

Blessings  in  both  kinds,  such  as  cheapen  tears,  — 

But  hush!  this  is  not  for  profaner  ears; 

Let  them  drink  molten  pearls  nor  dream  the  cost. 

**Some  suck  up  poison  from  a  sorrow's  core, 

As  naught  but  nightshade  grew  upon  Earth's  ground; 


i86- 


429 


Lofve  tamed  all  his  to  heart's-ease,  and  the  —  :re 
Fate  tried  Ms  bastioiis,  slie  bat  forced  a  dcx)r 
Leading  to  sweetar  manhood  and  more  socnd- 

'"Even  as  a  wind-waved  fountain's  swaying  sliade 
Seems  o£  mixed  race,  a  gray  wraith,  shot  with  s;m, 

So  through  his  trial  faith  transItLceat  rayed 

Till  darkness,  half  disnatored  so,  betrayed 
A  heart  of  sunshiae  that  would  fain  o'errucu 

"Surely  if  skill  in  song  the  shears  may  stay. 
And  of  its  purpose  cheat  the  charmed  abyss. 

If  our  poor  life  be  lengthened  by  a  lay. 

He  shall  not  go,  although  his  presence  may. 
And  the  nex:  age  in  praise  shall  doable  this. 

"Long  days  be  his,  and  each  as  lusty-sweet 

As  gracious  natures  find  his  song  to  be; 
^lay  Age  steal  on  with  sofdy-caaenced  feet 
Falling  ia  music,  as  for  him  were  meet 

Wliose  choicest  verse  is  harsher-roned  than  he!" 

In  May  occurred,  as  Colonel  Charles  Francis  Adams  tells  us  in 
his  memoir  of  R.  H.  Dana,  "what  promised  for  a  time  to  be  one 
of  the  great  state  trials  of  history  —  the  arraignment  of  Jeffer- 
son DaA-is  on  the  charge  of  high  treason  "  before  the  United  States 
Circuit  Court  at  Richmond.  Dana  was  appointed  as  counsel  for 
the  United  States.  He  was  associated  with  William  M.  E-rarts. 
"^Ir.  Da\'is  had,  since  his  capture,  been  held  in  close  confinement 
at  Fortress  Monroe,  and  it  was  felt  the  time  had  come  when  he 
should  either  be  tried  or  released,  on  bail.  The  course  finally  pur- 
sued towards  him  is  matter  of  history.  ...  That,  under  ail  the 
circumstances,  it  was  the  proper,  and,  indeed,  the  only  course  to 
be  pursued,  no  one  longer  questions.  At  the  moment  Dana,  as 
counsel,  strongly  recommended  it;  for,  though  necessarily  in  any 
trial  which  might  have  taken  place,  he  must  have  occupied  a  large 
posirion  in  the  public  eye,  he  was  too  genuine  a  man  and  too  good. 
a  lawyer,  as  well  as  patriot,  to  weigh  in  the  balance  a  httle  cheap 
personal  notoriety  or  professional  reputation  against  the  almost 
national  ignominy  involved  in  ha\-ing  the  last  scene  of  the  great 
civil  struggle  fought  out  over  a  criminal  charge  against  an  indi- 


43 o  'The  Saturday  Club 

vldual,  to  be  tried  before  a  petit  jury  of  Virginians  in  the  United 
States  District  Court-Room  at  Richmond." "^ 

Mr.  Forbes  —  who,  early  in  the  spring,  had  travelled  In  the 
South,  taking  great  pains  to  find  out  how  much  real  loyal  sen- 
timent was  there  among  the  local  planters,  and  how  the  young 
men,  soldiers,  and  others,  who  had  bought  land  and  were  trying 
the  experiment  of  themselves  becoming  planters,^  were  getting 
on  —  became  very  anxious  about  the  Reconstruction  problem,  as 
were  also  Dana  and  Governor  Andrew.  They  wished  that  some 
of  our  best  citizens,  patriotic  and  also  tactful,  like  Charles  G. 
Loring,  Martin  Brimmer,  and  J.  Ingersoll  Bowdltch,  should  meet 
in  sane  and  civil  conference  on  the  status  quo  some  of  the  leading 
Southern  citizens. 

In  the  end  of  May,  Forbes  wrote  to  C.  G.  Loring  of  the  "great 
need  of  vigorous  organization  for  the  coming  four  months.  The 
Rebel  States  will  send  thirty  to  fifty  more  Representatives  than 
before.  If  we  let  them  send  all  Democrats,  we  increase  immeasur- 
ably the  danger  of  the  closely  contested  States  of  the  North  going 
wrong  at  the  next  election.  With  moderate  exertion  we  can  divide 
the  South  now  and  neutralize  the  power  for  evil."  This  corre- 
spondence, and  active  exertion  which  followed,  succeeded  in  form- 
ing a  Reconstruction  Association  within  a  week,  and  immediately  a 
meeting  was  held  at  Governor  Bullock's  to  complete  arrangements, 
raise  funds,  and  appoint  a  committee  to  go  to  Richmond  and 
meet  the  Virginia  committee.  It  appears  that  the  committee  re- 
turned from  Richmond  quite  cheered  up;  also  with  their  recep- 
tion in  Philadelphia;  "and  all  agree  that  the  convention  was 
brought  Into  harmony  by  the  outside  influences  thus  applied." 

On  the  1st  of  May,  Emerson  writes  in  his  journal  the  names  of 
fifty  friends  and  relatives  to  whom  he  Is  appropriately  sending 
copies  of  his  May  Day  —  the  second  volume  of  his  poems  —  on 
that  happy  festival. 

1  The  charge  of  complicity  in  the  assassination  of  Lincoln  was,  happily,  dropped. 
There  was  no  evidence. 

2  Among  these  were  Colonel  Daniel  Chamberlain  (later  Governor  of  South  Carolina), 
Major  Henry  L.  Higginson,  Mr.  Edward  M.  Cary,  Captain  Channing  Clapp,  Lieutenants 
Garth  Wilkinson  James  and  Robertson  James,  the  sons  of  Mr.  Henry  James. 


i867  431 

He  also  wrote  in  the  journal:  — 

"Nature  sings,  — 

He  lives  not  who  can  refuse  me, 
All  my  force  saith,  Come  and  use  me! 
A  May-day  sun,  a  May-day  rain 
And  all  the  zone  is  green  again." 

Fifty  years  before,  Mr.  Emerson  had  startled  many  of  his  hear- 
ers assembled  at  Cambridge  to  hear  the  annual  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Oration,  and,  the  next  year,  shocked  or  pained  many  by  the 
message  which,  after  earnest  thought,  he  felt  bound  to  give,  in 
response  to  their  call,  to  the  young  men  graduating  from  the 
Harvard  Divinity  School.  Now,  after  a  half-century,  the  doors  of 
the  University  were  once  more  opened  to  him  and  again  he  gave 
the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration. 

The  kindly  and  wise  Professor  Gurney,  who  in  this  year  was 
chosen  into  the  Club,  makes  this  comment  on  the  occasion  in  a 
letter  written  to  Miss  Jane  Norton:  "You  have  seen  the  report 
of  Mr.  Emerson  in  the  Daily  [Jdvertiser].  Unhappily,  as  is  the 
way  with  Mr.  E.'s  reporters,  he  missed  some  of  the  most  striking 
sentences.  They  were  not  as  many  as  when  he  is  at  his  best, 
and  I  was  not  sorry  that  your  brother  remained  among  the  Ash- 
field  hills  and  views.  They  are  more  unfailing  spirits  than  Mr. 
Emerson,  even,  whose  face  gave  me  more  pleasure  to  see  than  his 
words  to  hear.^  I  had  hoped  that,  as  his  mind  went  back  to  the 
day  when  he  before  addressed  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  ran  over  the 
spiritual  growth  of  the  generation  since  —  so  much  more  striking 
than  all  its  material  progress  of  which  we  hear  so  much  —  in  which 
he  had  been  so  potent,  that  he  would  be  inspired  to  tell  us  how 
the  change  impressed  him.  Very  likely  the  story  can  be  told 
better  from  without,  and  one  would  like,  perhaps,  to  hear  Mont 
Blanc  or  Tournay  Cathedral  revealing,  even  unconsciously,  how 
they  have  ennobled  men.  Mr.  Emerson's  influence  seems  to  me 
to  have  resembled  that  of  some  such  masterpiece  of  nature  or 

*  Unhappily  for  this  occasion,  when  Mr.  Emerson  rose  to  read  his  address,  he  found  that 
he  had  lost  his  glasses  on  which  he  was  becoming  dependent.  He  had  so  much  difficulty 
that  it  marred  his  delivery,  and  during  the  first  half-hour  he  struggled  on  discouraged. 
Fortunately  some  kind  soul  then  lent  him  glasses  and  the  last  part  of  the  address  went 
well. 


43  2  "The  Saturday  Club 

art.  The  burden  of  his  tale,  too,  is  ever  the  same,  but  how  much 
fresher  it  remains  than  the  variety  of  any  of  his  contemporaries. 
Think,  then,  of  the  work  of  a  great  architect  who  speaks  to  men 
with  the  same  distinctness,  the  same  purity,  the  same  elevation 
for  thirty  times  thirty  years.  As  I  think  of  it,  it  makes  me  sad 
to  believe  that  your  brother's  vision  of  what  might  be  done  here 
or  at  Yale  will  not  meet  a  sympathetic  response.  Let  us  believe 
that  men  will  not  answer  his  call  to  provide  for  the  welfare  of 
future  generations  because  they  are  more  concerned  with  the 
needs  of  the  present.^ 

"I  wish  you  could  have  seen  Mr.  Lowell  preside  at  the  dinner. 
He  is  a  braw  man,  indeed,  when  he  is  arrayed  for  such  State 
occasions,  and  alike  unapproachable  in  wit  and  courtesy." 

As  from  1866  through  1867  the  friction-heat  between  President 
Johnson  and  Congress  grew  greater,  the  generous  mind  of  the 
ex-Governor  grew  more  aloof  from  the  controversial  proceedings. 
Mr.  Henry  G.  Pearson  in  his  biography  quotes  him  as  having  said 
that  all  the  combatants  "will  have  to  yield  something  of  what 
they  have  said  in  favour  of  what,  in  the  calm  depth  of  their  own 
souls,  they  will  all  find  themselves  to  believe:  and  in  this  remark 
I  include  President  Johnson  himself."  He  frankly  said  what  he 
considered  the  necessary  conditions  of  peace :  "The  black  man  must 
be  treated  as  a  citizen,  or  he  must  be  exterminated.  The  ex-Rebels 
must  be  treated  as  citizens,  or  they  must  be  exterminated.  Am- 
nesty to  the  Rebels  and  political  rights  to  the  black  man  consti- 
tute the  obverse  and  reverse  of  the  shield.  Any  scheme  which 
omits  either  is  empiricism  and  not  philosophy."  The  friction  of 
a  one-sided  course  of  legislation  and  action  being  thus  removed, 
he  believed  the  race  question  would  solve  itself  naturally. 

The  good  ex-Governor  interested  himself  in,  in  fact  set  on  foot, 
the  Land  Agency,  confident  that  the  economic  would  be  a  better 
road  to  follow  than  the  political.  Thus,  as  has  been  said,  he  tried 
to  help  the  Governor  of  Alabama  to  get  loans  from  Northern 

1  Probably  Mr.  Norton  had  urged  that,  in  building  the  Hall  to  keep  before  the  minds  of 
coming  generations  the  spirit  and  sacrifice  of  the  young  scholars  in  the  war  for  Freedom 
and  Country,  the  Alumni  should  remember  the  lavish  munificence  of  Florence  in  creating 
a  building  that  should  cheer  and  elevate  her  citizens  for  ages. 


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433 


merchants  and  others,  but  the  bitterness  of  the  strife  still  rankled 
on  both  sides,  and  the  experiments  of  Northern  ex-soldiers,  now 
colonists  and  planters,  resulted  "in  loss  of  the  entire  investment; 
in  many  cases  of  their  entire  fortunes." 

As  Sumner's  senatorial  term  neared  its  close,  many  good  Massa- 
chusetts men  wished  that  Andrew  should  succeed  him.  But  An- 
drew would  not  think  of  having  his  name  used  in  opposition  to  his 
honoured  friend.  Some  mischief-makers  tried  to  make  trouble 
between  them  by  false  quotations  of  Sumner.  In  answer  came 
a  prompt  denial  from  the  Senator,  expressing  his  long  affection 
and  respect,  adding:  *'I  have  often  said  that  whenever  Andrew 
desires  my  place,  I  shall  not  be  in  his  way.  .  .  .  Yet  there  are  two 
objects  which  I  should  like  to  see  accomplished  before  I  quit; 
one  is  the  establishment  of  our  Government  on  the  principles  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  the  other  is  the  revision 
of  international  maritime  law.  But  I  would  give  up  readily  op- 
portunities which  I  value,  if  I  could  in  this  way  gratify  an  old 
friend  and  a  valuable  public  character  like  Andrew." 

The  Presidential  election  was  to  occur  in  the  next  year,  and  the 
people  at  large  were  already  feeling  that  Grant  should  now  lead 
them,  and,  in  October,  hopes  were  excited  in  Massachusetts  that 
for  once  a  first-class  man  should  hold  the  office  of  Vice-President  — 
their  own  Andrew.    Diis  aliter  visum. 

Although  the  Governor  —  as  it  Vv^-as  natural  still  to  call  one 
whose  rectitude,  courage,  and  strong  sense  had  nobly  upheld  the 
honour  of  Massachusetts  through  the  years  of  the  great  war  —  had 
been  refreshed  by  a  month's  driving  journey  with  his  friend  Cyrus 
Woodman  in  New  Brunswick,  his  strength  was  intermittent  and 
gave  warning  of  danger.  But  he  worked  bravely  on  until,  on  the 
30th  of  October,  his  release  came  from  a  brain-stroke  almost 
as  mercifully  sudden  as  those  of  his  young  soldiers  shot  dead  in 
battle. 

Mr.  Pearson,  his  biographer,  tells  us  how,  when  the  news  spread 
to  the  homes  of  his  humble  neighbours  on  the  reverse  slope  of 
Beacon  Hill,  they,  sharing  the  universal  feeling  of  "  sorrow  less  for 
the  power  than  the  goodness  that  was  gone  from  the  world,  .  .  . 
crowded  the  street  before  the  house;  during  the  funeral  services 


434  T^he  Saturday  Club 

they  stood  humbly  in  the  rear  of  the  church  and  outside  it,  and 
walked  by  the  hearse  all  the  way  to  Mount  Auburn." 

Governor  Andrew  was  not  of  old  Boston  lineage.  He  had  come 
from  the  pleasant  Hingham  shore  and  made  his  way  in  the  city, 
and  while  none  questioned  his  loyalty  and  integrity,  many  leading 
citizens  had  been  anxious  as  to  his  cool  judgment  and  whether 
he  was  a  man  to  measure  with  the  great  emergency  that  imme- 
diately faced  him.  But  these  very  men  —  Colonel  Henry  Lee,  for 
instance,  who  gave  most  valuable  service  on  his  staff  —  came  to 
speak  of  him  thus:  — 

"  Governor  Andrew,  our  great '  War-Governor,'  —  the  Governor 
who  was  the  first  to  prepare  for  war,  the  first  to  prepare  for  peace, 
the  first  to  urge  the  policy  of  emancipation  as  a  war  measure,  the 
first  to  insist  upon  the  right  and  duty  of  the  coloured  men  to  bear 
arms,  feeling  that  not  only  the  liberties  of  the  coloured  men,  but 
the  destinies  of  the  Country  itself  were  involved  in  this  question. 
When,  after  two  years'  delay,  the  official  sanction  was  granted,  he 
hastened  to  organize  regiments,  to  watch  over  them  and  contend 
for  their  rights,  —  promised  and  withheld. 

"While  we  were  often  moody  and  vexed  and  dejected,  he  al- 
ways seemed  cheery  and  confident.  .  .  .  The  Lord  helped  his  un- 
belief; he  maintained  his  own  hope  and  faith  and  encouraged  his 
weaker  brethren. 

"President  Lincoln  is  reported  to  have  exclaimed,  upon  Gover- 
nor Andrew's  leaving  his  room  after  one  of  his  many  visits :  'There 
goes  the  Governor  who  gives  me  the  most  help  and  the  most 
trouble.'" 

He  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  New  York  and  conferring  with 
Southerners  at  the  New  York  Hotel;  had  he  lived,  his  media- 
tion would  have  been  important.  "As  to  his  political  sagacity,  it 
seemed  to  me  marvellous.  He  had  a  passionate  love  of  his  Coun- 
try and  of  its  people;  he  had  but  to  look  into  his  own  heart  to  read 
theirs;  his  eye  was  single,  his  whole  body  full  of  light;  he  scouted 
all  schemes  of  party,  all  passing  popular  impulses,  and  boldly 
advocated  measures  which  would  receive  the  ultimate  and  per- 
manent approval  of  the  people;  hence  his  death  was  a  great  relief 


1867 


435 


to  scheming  and  petty  politicians  and  a  great  grief  to  unpartisan, 
patriotic  citizens. 

"His  farewell  address  to  the  Legislature  surprised  even  his 
friends  by  its  breadth  of  view  and  its  boldness;  he  laid  down 
the  conditions,  the  only  conditions,  upon  which  peace  and  good- 
will could  be  established,  the  conditions  which,  after  ten  years* 
floundering  and  theorizing,  were  finally  adopted.  He  had  that 
touch  of  nature  which  makes  the  whole  world  kin;  his  cordial 
frankness  disarmed  prejudice  and  inspired  confidence  and  friend- 
ship, so  that  when  he  died,  among  the  men  who  first  came  for- 
ward to  the  relief  of  his  family  were  some  who  had  regarded  his 
accession  to  office  with  dismay  and  contempt.  The  most  pathetic 
and  heartfelt  obituary  of  him  was  in  the  columns  of  the  Post  on 
the  day  of  his  funeral." 

In  his  charming  memoir  of  Colonel  Lee,  Mr.  John  T.  Morse 
says:  — 

"Governor  Andrew  now  dwells  in  the  serene  atmosphere  of 
apotheosis;  the  children  of  the  men  of  that  generation  have  put 
him  into  Valhalla.  But  he  seemed  no  candidate  for  such  blissful 
quarters  when  he  was  elected  Governor.  Boston's  high  society  dis- 
trusted him  as  a  fanatic,  an  enthusiast,  a  sentimentalist,  a  dreamer 
of  dreams  very  objectionable  in  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the 
times.  They  doubted  his  practical  good  sense  and  deemed  his 
election  unfortunate  for  the  Country. 

"Work  began  at  once.  But  it  is  needless  to  repeat  the  hun- 
dred-times-told tale  of  Governor  Andrew's  military  preparations, 
the  glory  whereof  has  since  been  comfortably  adopted  by  Massa- 
chusetts as  her  own,  —  by  right  of  eminent  domain,  perhaps, — 
whereas  in  fact  nearly  all  Massachusetts  derided  and  abused  him 
at  the  time,  and  the  glory  was  really  as  much  his  individual  prop- 
erty as  were  his  coat  and  hat." 

The  mourning  for  the  Governor  was  in  no  wise  official  or  per- 
functory. Men  as  widely  apart  in  temperament  and  in  point  of 
view  as  Francis  W.  Bird  and  Robert  C.  Winthrop  learned  to  trust 
and  honour  him.  Mr.  Bird,  speaking  of  the  friends.  Dr.  Howe  and 
Governor  Andrew,  and  their  modesty,  said:  "Of  all  the  great  and 
good  men  whom  I  have  known  John  A.  Andrew  was  the  only  one 


43^  The  Saturday  Club 


who  seemed  so  unconscious  that  his  own  agency  was  of  the  slight- 
est importance  to  the  work  in  which  he  was  engaged,  and  yet 
both  devoted  themselves  to  their  work  with  as  much  earnestness 
and  zeal  as  if  they  felt  that  the  result  depended  upon  their  own 
personal  efforts.    Duty  was  theirs;  results  were  with  God." 

This  is  the  poem  that  Whittier  sent  when  the  statue  of  the 
loved  and  honoured  War-Governor  was  unveiled  in  Hingham  in 
1875:- 

"Behold  the  shape  our  eyes  have  known! 
It  lives  once  more  in  changeless  stone; 
So  looked  in  mortal  face  and  form 
Our  guide  through  peril's  deadly  storm. 

"But  hushed  the  beating  heart  we  knew, 
That  heart  so  tender,  brave,  and  true,  ' 

Firm  as  the  rooted  mountain  rock. 
Pure  as  the  quarry's  whitest  block! 

"Not  his  beneath  the  blood-red  star 
To  win  the  soldier's  envied  scar; 
Unarmed  he  battled  for  the  right, 
In  Duty's  never-ending  fight. 

"Un conquered  will,  unslumbering  eye. 
Faith  such  as  bids  the  martyr  die; 
The  prophet's  glance,  the  master's  hand 
To  mould  the  work  his  foresight  planned. 

"These  were  his  gifts;  what  Heaven  had  lent 
For  justice,  mercy,  truth,  he  spent. 
First  to  avenge  the  traitorous  blow. 
And  first  to  lift  the  vanquished  foe. 

"Lo,  thus  he  stood;  in  danger's  strait 
The  pilot  of  the  Pilgrim  State!" 

To  go  back  a  little,  Longfellow  in  his  journal  in  the  autumn  of 
this  year  had  given  a  glimpse  of  the  Club  and  its  guests,  as  well 
as  the  honours  paid  to  the  poet  for  his  faithful  interpretation  of 
Dante;  also  other  notes  of  interesting  doings  in  Boston  in  which 
the  members  appear:  — 

"October  26th.   At  the  Club  dinner,  many  strangers.   Among 


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437 


them,  Lord  Amberley,  Mr.  Hamilton,  Mr.  Vogeli.  Lord  A.  is  son 
of  Earl  Russell.  Mr.  H.  is  in  the  Colonial  Office;  .  .  .  Mr.  V.  is  a 
Frenchman,  living  in  Brazil,  who  has  come  to  Cambridge  to  trans- 
late Agassiz's  new  book  on  Brazil.  .  .  .  During  dinner,  a  wreath  of 
choice  flowers  was  brought  to  Longfellow  from  Mrs.  Fields,  Mrs. 
Stowe,  and  Lady  Amberley.  .  .  . 

"  November  20th.  Dined  with  Dr.  Holmes.  On  my  way,  stopped 
at  the  Parker  House  to  see  Dickens  (just  arrived  from  England) 
whom  I  found  very  well  and  most  cordial.  It  was  right  pleasant 
to  see  him  again,  after  so  many  years  —  twenty-five !  He  looks 
somewhat  older,  but  is  as  elastic  and  quick  in  his  movement  as 
ever.  At  Holmes's  we  had^the  Earl  of  Camperdown,  Lord  Morley, 
and  Mr.  Cowper;  all  very  agreeable  gentlemen. 

"21st.  Young  Holmes  called  with  Lord  C,  who  brings  me  a 
letter  from  Motley,  and  whom  I  like  very  much.  Dined  with 
Fields  —  a  dinner  of  welcome  to  Dickens. 

vV'22nd.  In  town.  Passed  through  the  Public  Garden,  and  saw 
Story's  statue  of  Everett,  which  is  good. 

"28th.  Thanksgiving-day.  Dickens  came  out  to  a  quiet  family 
dinner. 

"  29th.  In  the  afternoon  Agassiz  came  to  read  us  the  sheets  of 
his  closing  chapters  on  Brazil." 

I  forget  which  one  of  the  Club  it  was  who  gave  this  reminis- 
cence: "Charles  Dickens  dined  with  us  during  his  second  visit  in 
1867.  He  compounded  a  'jug'  (anglice),  or  pitcher  as  we  call  it, 
of  the  gin  punch  for  which  his  father  was  famous.  No  witch  at  her 
incantation  could  be  more  rapt  in  her  task  than  Dickens  was  in  his 
as  he  stooped  over  the  drink  he  was  mixing." 

Fields  delighted  in  sporting  with  Dickens,  with  whom  he  was 
on  most  intimate  terms,  as  well  appears  in  his  Yesterdays  with 
Authors.  -J 

At  the  Dickens  dinner  mentioned  above,  Mr.  Grattan,  the 
English  Consul,  gracefully  said  that  "the  Chairman's  four  Vices 
were  as  good  as  the  four  virtues  of  any  other  man."  Holmes, 
Hillard,  Ellis  Gray  Loring,  and  Thomas  J.  Stevenson  were  the 
vice-presidents. 

Hard  as  it  was  to  draw  Whittier  from  his  country  home,  Dickens 


43  8  "The  Saturday  Club 

nearly  accomplished  this  feat,  unintentionally.  He  was  the  guest 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fields  while  giving  his  readings  in  Boston.  Mrs. 
Fields  tells  the  story:  "To  our  surprise,  he  wrote  to  ask  if  he  could 
possibly  get  a  seat  to  hear  him.  'I  see  there  is  a  crazy  rush  for 
tickets.'  A  favourable  answer  was  despatched  to  him  as  soon  as 
practicable,  but  he  had  already  repented  of  the  indiscretion.  'My 
dear  Fields,'  he  wrote,  'up  to  the  last  moment  I  have  hoped  to 
occupy  the  seat  so  kindly  promised  me  for  this  evening.  But 
I  find  I  must  give  it  up.  Gladden  with  it  the  heart  of  some  poor 
wretch  who  dangled  and  shivered  in  vain  in  your  long  queue  the 
other  morning,  I  must  read  my  Pickwick  alone,  as  the  Marchion- 
ess played  cribbage.'" 

Mrs.  Fields  gives  a  delightful  note  on  the  subject  of  the  popu- 
larity of  Whittier  s  "Tent  on  the  Beach."  "  'Think,'  he  says,  'of 
bagging  in  this  tent  of  ours  an  unsuspecting  public  at  the  rate 
of  a  thousand  a  day.^*  This  will  never  do.  The  swindle  is  awful. 
Barnum  is  a  saint  to  us.  I  am  bowed  with  a  sense  of  guilt, 
ashamed  to  look  an  honest  man  in  the  face.  But  Nemesis  is  on 
our  track;  somebody  will  puncture  our  tent  yet,  and  it  will  collapse 
like  a  torn  balloon.' " 

In  November,  Ticknor  and  Fields,  who  had  published  Long- 
fellow's translation  of  the  Divina  Commedia,  gave  a  dinner  to  the 
poet  in  honour  of  the  completion  of  this  long  task.  For  him  it  had 
been  a  resource  for  alleviation  of  overwhelming  grief.  To  his 
friend  the  German  poet  Freiligrath  he  wrote:  "Of  what  I  have 
been  through,  during  the  last  six  years,  I  dare  not  venture  to  write 
even  to  you ;  it  is  almost  too  much  for  any  man  to  bear  and  live. 
I  have  taken  refuge  in  this  translation  of  the  Divine  Comedy,  and 
this  may  give  it  perhaps  an  added  interest  in  your  sight." 

When  one  remembers  how  Longfellow  and  Lowell  cared  for  the 
great  Florentine's  triple  vision,  a  strange  and  moving  contrast  is 
found  in  Dr.  Holmes's  feeling.  His  correspondence  with  Mrs. 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  —  who  had  spiritually  survived,  unscathed, 
immersion  of  her  family  for  generations  in  cruel  Calvinism  — 
shows  how  his  tender  and  impressionable  nature  was  haunted 
from  childhood  with  sermons  he  had  heard,  or  books  read  then. 

Writing  to  this  lady  in  the  end  of  this  year  and  speaking  of  the 


i867 


439 


Dante  readings  at  which  he  had  been  present,  he  says:  "I  believe 
I  did  not  go  to  one  of  the  Inferno  seances;  [to  but]  one  or  two  of 
the  Purgatorio,  the  others  all  Paradiso.  How  often  have  I  said, 
talking  with  Lowell,  almost  the  same  things  you  say  about  the 
hideousness,  the  savagery,  of  that  mediaeval  nightmare!  Theodore 
of  Abyssinia  ought  to  sleep  with  it  under  his  pillow,  as  Alexander 
slept  with  the  Iliad."  ^ 

Again  Longfellow  records :  — 

"December,  1867.  Saturday  Club.  William  Everett  there, 
who  said  that  while  his  father  was  member  of  Congress  and  was 
at  one  time  returning  to  Boston,  he  was  stopped  in  the  street  as 
he  passed  through  Philadelphia  by  a  haggard  man  wrapped  in  a 
cloak.  'I  am  Aaron  Burr,'  said  the  figure,  'and  I  pray  you  to 
petition  Congress  to  aid  me  in  my  misery.'  Mr.  Everett  replied 
that  the  Member  from  his  own  District  was  the  person  to  whom  to 
apply.  'I  know  that,'  was  the  sad  rejoinder,  'but  the  others  are 
all  strangers  to  me.  I  pray  you  to  help  me.'  After  some  reflection, 
Mr.  Everett  promised  to  try  to  do  something  in  his  behalf.  For- 
tunately, however,  he  was  released  by  death,  before  Congress  was 
again  in  session. 

"Mr.  Quincy2  was  much  interested  in  obtaining  greater  free- 
dom for  the  city  for  merchandise  over  the  Western  railroads." 

The  Lyceum  system  at  this  period  was  a  principal  interest  for 
a  winter's  evening  alike  in  city  and  village  throughout  the  land. 
From  New  England  and  New  York  it  had  spread  far  westward 
and  somewhat  southward,  though  into  no  "slave  State"  except  in 
the  city  of  St.  Louis.  Agassiz,  Dana,  Holmes,  Whipple,  Emerson, 
Sumner  too  on  occasion,  were  glad  thus  to  increase  their  incomes, 
and  also  try  on  their  audiences  their  recent  writings  which,  pruned, 
or  enlarged,  and  polished,  later  appeared  as  essays.  Dana,  and 
particularly  Holmes,  disliked  the  process,  especially  the  billeting 
in  country  taverns  or  in  the  chill  best  bedroom  of  the  house  of  the 

^  I  remember  hearing  the  good  Doctor  once,  in  a  medical  lecture,  speak  in  an  almost 
impassioned  way  of  parents  putting  into  the  hands  of  imaginative  children  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress  of  Bunyan,  with  its  City  of  Destruction,  and  black,  horned  ApoUyon  barring 
Christian's  way,  and  Giant  Despair.  Yet  most  children  of  our  generation,  I  think,  found 
it  interesting. 

*  Presumably  our  associate  Edmund  Quincy. 


440  The  Saturday  Club 

"curator."  Holmes's  asthma,  when  away  from  his  beloved  city, 
often  proved  distressing.  Emerson,  though  undergoing  great  ex- 
posure in  long  drives  on  wintry  prairies,  enjoyed  seeing  the  grow- 
ing country  and  meeting  the  prospering  sons  of  Concord  farmers, 
and  always  returned  refreshed. 

Holmes,  this  year,  in  an  amusing  letter  to  Fields  from  Mon- 
treal, on  his  way  home  from  a  varied  experience,  utters  the  follow- 
ing among  many  groans  about  his  adventures  on  this  tour:  ^  — 

"I  am  as  comfortable  here  as  I  can  be,  but  I  have  earned  my 
money,  for  I  have  had  my  full  share  of  my  old  trouble.  .  .  .  Don't 
talk  to  me  about  taverns!  There  is  just  one  genuine,  decent  thing 
occasionally  to  be  had  in  them  —  namely,  a  boiled  egg.  The  soups 
taste  pretty  good  sometimes,  but  their  sources  are  involved  in  a 
darker  mystery  than  that  of  the  Nile.  Omelettes  taste  as  if  they 
had  been  carried  in  the  waiter's  hat,  or  fried  in  an  old  boot.  I 
ordered  scrambled  eggs  one  day.  It  must  be  they  had  been 
scrambled  for  by  somebody,  but  who  —  who  in  possession  of  a 
sound  reason  could  have  scrambled  for  what  I  had  set  before  me 
under  that  name. ^  .  .  .  Then  the  waiters  with  their  napkins  —  what 
don't  they  do  with  those  napkins !  Mention  any  one  thing  of  which 
you  think  you  can  say  with  truth,  '  That  they  do  not  do.' 

"  I  have  really  a  fine  parlour,  but  every  time  I  enter  it  I  perceive 
that 

Still,  sad  'odour'  of  humanity 

which  clings  to  it  from  my  predecessor.  .  .  .  Every  six  months  a 
tavern  should  burn  to  the  ground  with  all  its  traps,  'its  proper- 
ties,' its  beds,  its  pots  and  kettles,  and  start  afresh.  ..." 

Mr.  Emerson,  brought  up  to  hardihood,  fulfilled  his  engage- 
ments regardless  of  comfort  and  often  at  serious  risk.  Safely 
arrived  in  St.  Louis  in  mid-December,  he  writes  in  his  journal: 
"Yesterday  morning  in  bitter  cold  weather  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
crossing  the  Mississippi  in  a  skiff  with  Mr. ,  we  the  sole  pas- 
sengers, and  a  man  and  a  boy  for  oarsmen.  I  have  no  doubt  they 
did  their  work  better  than  the  Harvard  six  could  have  done  it, 
as  much  of  the  rowing  was  on  the  surface  of  fixed  ice,  in  fault  of 

^  Life  and  Letters,  by  John  Torrey  Morse. 


i867 


441 


running  water.  But  we  arrived  without  other  accident  than  be- 
coming almost  fixed  ice  ourselves;  but  the  long  run  to  the  Tepfer 
House,  the  volunteered  rubbing  of  our  hands  by  the  landlord  and 
clerks,  and  good  fire  restored  us." 

During  this  year  the  only  member  chosen  into  the  Club  was 
Ephraim  Whitman  Gurney,  charming  man  and  interesting 
scholar,  Professor  of  Latin  in  Harvard  University. 


EPHRAIM  WHITMAN  GURNEY 

In  preparing  to  write  a  sketch  of  a  scholar,  and  a  professor  eminent 
in  his  day  in  the  University  for  his  varied  attainments  and  his 
success  in  teaching,  also  in  administrative  duties  —  more  than  all 
this,  a  man  who  won  the  respect  and,  one  may  almost  say,  the 
affectionate  regard  of  the  body  of  the  students  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century  —  it  comes  with  a  shock  to  find  that  hardly  a  word  of  written 
record  remains.  In  the  College  library  one  finds  only  the  baldest 
notice  of  his  death,  and  two  papers  contributed  by  him  to  a  maga- 
zine.^ One  of  the  best  appointments  that  the  University  has  ever 
made,  his  remembrance  will  pass  away  within  twenty  years  when 
a  few  men,  now  elderly,  die. 

Nathan  Gurney  and  his  wife,  of  Abington,  moved  to  Boston, 
where,  in  February,  1829,  their  son  Ephraim  was  born.  It  is  said 
that  while  it  had  been  the  plan  that  he  should  enter  some  business, 
a  wish  to  go  to  college  sprang  up  from  the  seed  sown  by  his  reading 
and  religious  inquiry.  He  was  then  eighteen,  but  set  to  the  work 
of  preparation,  and  in  sixteen  months  entered  Harvard.  He  won 
good  rank,  and  graduated  in  1852.  Then  sickness  interrupted  his 
work  for  some  few  years.  He  made  a  broad  plan  of  study,  and, 
meanwhile,  taught  in  private  schools  in  Boston.  In  1859,  he  was 
appointed  Latin  tutor  at  Cambridge  and,  it  is  said,  doubted  his 
fitness;  but  the  fourth  year  from  that  time  found  him  Assistant 
Professor.  In  the  following  year  the  writer,  a  sophomore,  having 
passed  from  the  teaching  of  the  kindly  George  Noble,  came  into 
the  even  pleasanter  atmosphere  of  Gurney's  recitation-room.  He 
understood  boys,  treated  them  in  a  friendly,  companionable  way, 
assuming  that  they  were  gentlemen,  and  could  be  interested  in 
the  matter  they  were  reading,  and  did  his  part  with  good  success 
towards  accomplishing  this  result.  He  was  never  petty,  but  could 
with  a  look  and  a  word  check  incipient  disorder.  While  we  were 
translating  Cicero's  Letters,  Mr.  Gurney  would  throw  in  here  and 
there  some  little  bit  of  domestic  or  social  mention  about  the  Ro- 

^  There  are,  however,  very  pleasing  notices  of  him  in  the  President's  Annual  Report. 


Ephraim  Whitman  Gurney       443 

man  to  whom  the  letter  was  addressed,  or  who  was  alluded  to, 
which  made  us  feel  that,  with  the  freedom  of  an  intimate  bachelor- 
friend,  he  dropped  in  to  supper  informally  at  any  Palatine  or 
^squiline  home  he  pleased,  and  knew  the  way  to  them  now. 

Meet  him  in  the  Faculty  room  (where  he  sat  as  chairman  of  the 
Parietal  Committee)  when  summoned  for  discipline,  or  call  on 
him  in  his  room  on  an  errand  —  he  was  always  genial.^  His  face 
beamed  through  his  glasses.  He  actually  liked  college  boys.  When 
talked  to  about  some  student,  he  always  seemed  to  have  some 
personal  notion  about  each.  He  knew  human  nature  and  believed 
in  it.  This  was  the  secret  of  his  success  with  happy-go-lucky  boys 
whom  he  kindly  and  understandingly  admonished.  They  at  once 
respected  and  liked  him.  He  recognized  that  they  were  "in  the 
green-apple  stage,"  and  allowed  for  that. 

In  President  Eliot's  expansion  of  the  College  to  a  University, 
Gurney  was  a  counsellor  and  a  helper,  and  in  the  first  breaking-up 
of  the  old  ice  he  was  made  Dean.  He  had  been  appointed  Assistant 
Professor  of  Philosophy  during  the  Presidency  of  Dr.  Hill,  and 
when  Mr.  Eliot  came  to  the  presidency  he  had  recently  been  made 
University  Professor  of  History. 

Of  Gurney  as  Dean  President  Eliot  says:  "To  the  discharge  of 
his  new  and  delicate  functions  Professor  Gurney  brought  ready 
tact  and  insight,  unfailing  courtesy  and  common  firmness,  much 
experience  and  a  quick  and  sound  judgment."  There  was  "unani- 
mous appreciation  by  the  Governing  Beards  of  his  success.  .  .  . 
His  writing  was  clear,  thoughtful,  and  cogent;  more  valuable  as 
the  work  of  one,  not  merely  a  theorist,  but  who  wrote  under  re- 
sponsibility, and  who  was  taking  daily  active  part  in  the  mat- 
ters which  he  discussed.  He  moulded  the  office  and  headed  it  for 
six  years,  then  resigned  to  go  to  Europe  with  his  wife  for  a  stay 
of  some  duration." 

A  writer  in  the  Nation  wrote  at  the  time  of  Gurney's  death: 
"When  Eliot  became  President  in  1870  he  knew  his  man  as  the 
one  who  could  not  only  be  a  friendly  adviser  of  boys  in  their 
studies,  but  also  in  their  sports:  he  also  dealt  with  the  penal  side 
of  college  discipline."  This  was,  of  course,  the  strongest  test  of  his 

^  No  photograph  that  I  have  seen  does  any  justice  to  Mr.  Gurney's  pleasant  face. 


444  T^he  Saturday  Club 

popularity,  but  the  writer  says  that  "the  parents  of  many  a  youth 
who  .  .  .  found  the  strait  and  narrow  way  of  industry  and  econ- 
omy hard  to  follow  in  college  life  can  bear  testimony  to  the  con- 
sideration and  tenderness  and  the  wisdom  with  which  the  stern 
duties  of  the  Dean  were  discharged.  No  man  whose  own  career 
had  been,  as  Mr.  Gurney's  had,  one  of  rigid  self-denial  and  untir- 
ing labour  ever  had  more  sympathy  for  and  generosity  in  dealing 
with  the  errors  and  shortcomings  of  wayward  youngsters,  or  knew 
better  how  to  make  words  of  warning  words  of  hope  and  encour- 
agement." 

Mr.  Gurney  married,  rather  late  in  life,  Miss  Ellen  Hooper,  who, 
some  years  earlier,  I  was  told,  had  been  in  a  Latin  class  which  he 
conducted  in  the  Agassiz  School.  She  was  the  sister  of  our  mem- 
ber Edward  W.  Hooper.  After  their  simple  marriage  ceremony, 
probably  conducted  by  James  Freeman  Clarke  at  the  little  chapel 
in  Indiana  Place  in  Boston,  Mr.  Gurney  and  his  wife  walked  out 
over  the  bridge  to  their  new  Cambridge  home  on  the  airy  ridge 
near  the  Reservoir.  Mrs.  Henry  L.  Higginson,  who,  as  Ida  Agassiz, 
had  been  a  close  friend  of  Miss  Hooper,  spoke  thus  of  the  Gur- 
neys:  "He  was  wisdom  incarnate.  He  could  look  all  round  things. 
His  charity  enclosed  mankind.  He  was  so  quiet  that  he  was  not 
a  marked  person  in  society.  With  his  wife,  an  equally  beautiful 
character,  he  was  always  wise  and  sweet."  They  were  childless. 
She  outlived  him.  Like  her  husband,  she  was  a  devoted  and  re- 
markable scholar  and  reader,  which  gave  them  much  pleasure  to- 
gether; but  they  were  unselfish,  always  friendly  and  helpful,  and 
living  simply.  They  joyfully  pursued  studies  together,  and  to- 
gether they  led  a  perfectly  happy  life,  though  both  died  untimely. 

Henry  Higginson  said  of  this  household,  "The  Gurneys'  house 
became,  more  than  before,  a  place  that  young  students  could  go 
to,"  and  quoted  a  wise  teacher,  on  causes  favourable  to  education, 
to  this  effect:  "If  a  young  man  has  a  friendship  with  a  cultivated 
woman,  then  his  education  Is  on  a  good  road."  "To  go  to  that 
home  was  a  liberal  culture,  not  only  in  'the  humanities,'  but  in 
human  relations  at  their  best." 

In  i860,  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  chose 
Mr.  Gurney  a  member  and  we  are  told  in  his  memoir  that  he 


Ephraim  Whitman  Gurney       445 

found  his  place  in  the  section  of  Philology  and  Archaeology,  but 
these  studies  and  his  classics  were  for  him  but  steps  to  History. 
The  breadth  of  Gurney's  studies  bore  fruit  in  spacious  ideas.  He 
went  on  from  the  classic  authors  to  the  study  of  Roman  Law,  to 
understand  better  the  history  and  influence  of  Rome.  He  got  this 
branch  introduced  into  Harvard.  His  studies  in  Philosophy  show 
the  results  of  his  admirable  preparation.^ 

The  quality  of  the  Gurneys  and  the  security  with  which  it 
could  be  counted  on,  as  well  as  the  degree  of  friendship,  appears 
in  this  anecdote  told  by  President  Eliot.  A  student  fell  ill;  the  dis- 
ease proved  to  be  smallpox;  he  must  at  once  be  removed  from  the 
dormitory.  The  President  at  once  went  to  this  pair  and  said, 
"May  I  send  the  boy  up  here,  and  you  come  and  live  with  us.?  Or 
shall  I  put  him  in  my  house  and  come  up  here  to  you.^*"  One  of 
these  alternatives  was  immediately  arranged  between  the  friends. 

Henry  James,  Jr.,  regretfully  passing  by  the  names  of  persons 
remarkable  for  power,  nobility,  or  charm,  whom  he  knew  in  Cam- 
bridge, speaks  of  "Exquisite  Mrs.  Gurney,  of  the  infallible  taste, 
the  beautiful  hands  and  the  tragic  fate;  Gurney  himself,  for  so 
long  Dean  of  the  Faculty  at  Harvard  and  trusted  judge  of  all 
judgments,  .  .  .  they  would  delightfully  adorn  a  page,  and  ap- 
pease a  piety  that  is  still  athirst,  if  I  had  n't  to  let  them  pass. 
Harshly  condemned  to  let  them  pass,  and  looking  wistfully  after 
them  as  they  go,  how  can  I  yet  not  have  inconsequently  asked 
them  to  turn  a  moment  more  before  disappearing.^"'^ 

I  find  in  Mr.  Emerson's  journal  of  1868,  probably  written  on 
returning  from  the  Club  dinner,  this  comment  on  members  and 
guests:  "Gurney  seemed  to  me,  in  an  hour  I  once  spent  with  him, 
a  fit  companion.  Holmes  has  some  rare  qualities.  Horatio  Green- 
ough  shone,  but  one  only  listened  to  him.  Henry  Hedge,  George 
Ward  ^  especially,  and,  if  one  could  ever  get  over  the  fences,  and 
actually  on  even  terms,  Elliot  Cabot.    There  is  an  advantage  of 

^  See  his  letter  given  by  Professor  James  B.  Thayer  at  the  close  of  the  latter's  book, 
The  Letters  of  Chauncey  Wright,  with  whom  Gurney  used  to  discuss  questions.  With  this 
man,  by  the  testimony  of  all  his  friends,  of  extraordinary  attainment,  great  intellect,  and 
lovable  qualities,  Mr.  Gurney  was  in  close  friendship  during  their  comparatively  short  lives. 

^  Memories  of  a  Son  and  Brother. 

8  George  Cabot  Ward,  of  New  York,  brother  of  Samuel  Gray  Ward. 


44^  The  Saturday  Club 

being  somewhat  in  the  chair  of  the  company  —  a  little  older  and 
better-read  —  if  one  is  aiming  at  searching  thought.  And  yet, 
how  heartily  I  could  sit  silent,  purely  listening,  and  receptive, 
beside  a  rich  mind!" 

Gurney  kept "  an  open  mind  daily  instructed  by  men  and  af- 
fairs." It  was  remarkable  that  he  was  at  once  a  Fellow  and  a 
Professor,  a  high  and  very  rare  distinction. 

Professor  Torrey  resigned  the  chair  of  McLean  Professor  of 
History,  which  he  had  filled  with  such  fidelity,  in  1886,  and  Mr. 
Gurney  was  appointed  his  successor;  but  it  was  too  late.  A  wast- 
ing and  painful  disease  had  fixed  itself  upon  him  and  he  died 
before  the  end  of  the  year. 

Speaking  of  Mr.  Gurney's  work  in  the  last  few  years  of  his  life 
Professor  Bartlett  said,  — "It  had  never  been  done  so  well  before, 
and  it  could  not  be  better  done." 

In  the  memories  of  most  of  the  students  for  twenty-nine  years 
he  remained  not  only  as  admirable  teacher,  but  as  friendly  man. 
But  he  left  neither  notes  nor  books.  He  had  filled  and  delighted 
himself  by  study,  and  he  had  talked  to  his  students  and  met  their 
questions  from  the  fulness  of  his  knowledge,  seeming  to  live  in  the 
subject  of  his  discourse.  A  student,  whom  he  had  tutored,  well 
said  of  Gurney's  warming  influence  in  the  chilly  atmosphere  of 
Faculty  relations,  "One  might  feel  affection  going  out  of  him  and 
coming  in  from  him."  Some  one  said  of  Mr.  Gurney  that  "he 
was  never  so  happy  as  in  the  still  air  of  delightful  studies." 

This  very  human  philosopher  and  professor  said,  "I  care  much 
more  about  men  than  about  man." 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  XV 
1868 

Res  nolunt  diu  male  administrari 

This  want  of  adapted  society  is  mutual.  The  man  of  thought,  the  man  of  letters, 
the  man  of  science,  the  administrator  skilful  in  affairs,  the  man  of  manners  and  culture, 
whom  you  so  much  wish  to  find  —  each  of  these  is  wishing  to  be  found.  Each  wishes 
to  open  his  thought,  his  knowledge,  his  social  skill  to  the  daylight  in  your  company 
and  affection,  and  to  exchange  his  gifts  for  yours;  and  the  first  hint  of  a  select  and 
intelligent  company  is  welcome. 

Emerson 

IN  Emerson's  journal,  the  following  words,  written  early  in  the 
year,  show  that  the  Reconstruction  strife  with  the  President 
reached  even  Concord:  "What  a  divine  beneficence  attaches  to 
Andrew  Johnson!  In  six  troubles,  and  in  seven,  he  has  been  an 
angel  to  the  Republican  Party,  delivering  them  out  of  their  dis- 
tresses." This  recalls  Mr.  Pearson's  sentence  In  his  Life  of  Andrew: 
"Congress  has  set  Its  trap  for  the  President  right  In  the  path  where 
his  obstinacy  and  rashness  were  sure  to  lead  him."  The  patriots 
of  the  Club,  all  anxious  to  have  the  Union  restored  on  lines  that 
should  ensure  justice,  permanence,  and  good  feeling,  were  still 
of  varying  shades  of  opinion  before  this  most  difficult  problem. 
The  long  thunderstorm  of  war  had  not  yet  cleared  the  sky. 

Mr.  Forbes  wrote  in  January  to  Goldwin  Smith  in  England: 
"Last  week  our  Republican  Governor  here,  the  successor  of  An- 
drew, has  dared  to  nominate  to  the  Chief  Justiceship,  a  pro-slavery 
Democrat  who  voted  against  emancipation,  and  this  over  Judge 
Hoar,  the  best  judge  and  the  best  man  in  Massachusetts,  now  that 
we  have  lost  our  dear  Governor  Andrew.  We  are  fighting  this 
wretched  backsliding.  It  Is  done  on  the  miserable  trimming  pre- 
tence of  giving  the  sham  Democracy  one  judge;  it  is  really  a  sop 
to  the  reactionists.  ...  I  fully  expect  to  see  Grant  elected  and 
thus  gain  four  years  of  honest,  firm  administration  in  which  to 
tide  over  the  difficulties  of  reconstructing  labour  and  society  at  the 


44  8  "The  Saturday  Club 

South.  I  pity  him  his  task  and  his  danger  of  losing  his  splendid 
present  position;  but  we  need  the  four  years  for  our  safety  and  that 
of  the  blacks." 

Two  months  later,  having  made  a  tour  through  several  Southern 
States  in  the  interval,  and  talked  temperately  and  civilly  with 
men  of  different  politics  and  classes,  white  and  black,  Mr.  Forbes 
wrote  to  Hon.  W.  P.  Fessenden:  "From  this  intercourse,  making 
allowance  for  the  prejudices  of  each  class,  I  draw  one  unhesitating 
conclusion,  that  upon  the  unity  and  cohesion  of  the  Republican 
Party,  for  the  coming  six  months  depends  the  fate  of  the  Union 
men,  black  and  white,  and  to  a  great  extent  the  successful  restora- 
tion of  industry  and  order  for  years  to  come." 

After  a  real  peace  should  be  restored,  Mr.  Forbes  said,  how  long 
the  party  lived  was  very  immaterial,  "but  for  many  years  after 
such  restoration  the  four  million  blacks  will  need  something  in  the 
direction  of  a  Freedmen's  Bureau,  not  for  charity,  but  for  advice, 
and  a  sort  of  guardianship  in  their  new  rights  and  in  securing  some 
little  education."  He  was  anxious  that  this  should  not  be  too  much 
of  a  charity,  but  should  help  these  people  to  help  themselves. 

At  this  time,  another  entry  in  the  journal  by  Mr.  Emerson, 
now  an  Overseer  of  Harvard  College,  shows  a  symptom  of  the 
beneficent  awakening  at  Cambridge,  soon  to  come:  "In  the 
Board  of  Overseers  .  .  .  the  Committee  on  Honorary  Degrees 
reported  unfavourably  on  all  but  the  commanding  names,  and 
instantly  the  President  and  an  ex-President  pressed  the  action 
of  the  Corporation,  acknowledging  that  these  men  proposed  for 
honours  were  not  very  able  or  distinguished  persons,  but  it  was  the 
custom  to  give  these  degrees  without  insisting  on  eminent  merit. 
I  remember  that  Dr.  FoUen,  in  his  disgust  at  the  Reverend  and 
Honourable  Doctors  he  saw  in  America,  wished  to  drop  the  title 
and  be  called  Mister." 

In  June,  Mr.  Adams,  who  had  insisted  on  resigning  his  position, 
returned  to  private  life  in  Quincy  after  his  seven  years'  stay  in 
England.  Of  the  debt  his  Country  owed  her  retired  Minister, 
Lowell,  after  he  had  himself  been  Minister  to  England,  said: 
"None  of  our  generals  in  the  field;  not  Grant  himself,  did  better  or 


l868  449 

more  trying  service  than  he  in  his  forlorn  outpost  of  London. 
Cavour  did  hardly  more  for  Italy."  The  change  must  have  seemed 
great  on  other  accounts  than  the  leaving  public  life.  As  Mr. 
Morse,  his  biographer,  says,  a  great  gulf  intervened  between  the 
United  States  of  1861  and  of  1868.  Mr.  Adams  wished  to  retire 
to  quiet  studies  in  the  ancestral  house  at  Quincy,  and  kept  out 
of  the  political  wrangle  then  going  on,  which  disgusted  him.  Per- 
haps this  attitude  was  the  occasion  of  his  not  being  immediately 
chosen  into  the  Club,  as,  had  he  returned  after  his  victory  in  the 
Confederate  ironclad  struggle,  he  surely  must  have  been.  Within 
a  few  months  he  was  offered  the  presidency  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity. He  said  he  saw  in  himself  "no  especial  fitness"  for  the  office 
and  declined. 

Motley  also  returned  in  June  from  England,  where  he  had 
lived  for  some  months  after  leaving  Vienna,  and,  with  his  family, 
established  himself  at  No.  2,  Park  Street. 

The  historian  of  another  brave  and  sturdy  Republic  lent  his 
voice  and  influence  to  history-in-the-making  at  a  critical  period  in 
his  own  country.  The  Presidential  campaign  began,  and  Motley, 
invited  to  speak  in  Boston,  strongly  urged  the  Republican  issues, 
especially  the  meeting  the  public  debts  in  honest  money.  His 
earnest  and  brilliant  addresses  in  Boston,  "Four  Questions  for 
the  People,"  and  in  New  York,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Historical 
Society,  on  "Historic  Progress  and  American  Democracy,"  were 
said  to  have  been  delightful  and  effective.  To  him  Grant  seemed 
the  man  for  the  hour,  and  Dr.  Holmes  said,  "There  was  not  a 
listener  whose  heart  did  not  warm  as  he  heard  the  glowing  words 
in  which  the  speaker  recorded  the  noble  achievements  of  the 
soldier  who  must  in  so  many  ways  have  reminded  him  of  his 
favourite  character,  William  the  Silent." 

As  summer  came  in,  Mr.  Longfellow  with  his  daughters,  his 
son  with  his  bride,  and  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Tom  Appleton, 
left  home  for  a  year  of  Europe.  From  the  record  in  Mrs.  Fields's 
journal,  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  Club  met  for  once  at  a  private 
house,  for  she  wrote:  — 

"Saturday,  May  23rd,  1868.  To-night,  probably  in  place  of  the 
regular  Saturday  dinner,  there  was  a  farewell  dinner  to  Longfellow 


45 o  "The  Saturday  Club 

at  our  house,  eleven  at  table.  There  should  have  been  twelve  if 
Alexander  Longfellow  had  not  missed  a  train.  Emerson,  Agassiz, 
Holmes,  Lowell,  Greene,^  Norton,  Whipple,  Dana,  and  Long- 
fellow came.  There  was  much  pleasant  talk,  a  poem  by  O.  W.  H., 
and  the  farewells.  Longfellow  inquired  after  all  his  old  and  hum- 
ble friends  in  England  whom  he  intends  seeing,  rather  than  any 
celebrities.  Mr.  Emerson  was  full  of  sweetness  and  talk.  He  tries 
to  persuade  Longfellow  to  go  to  Greece  to  look  after  the  Klephts, 
(supposed)  authors  of  Romaic  poetry,  which  they  both  believe 
is  as  original  as  beautiful.  ^ 

"Agassiz  contested  with  Emerson  about  Darwin.  Dana  talked 
of  the  sea  and  of  the  folly  of  precaution.  It  has  always  been  a 
habit  of  his  since  the  Two  Years  to  carry  a  compass,  a  coil  of  rope, 
a  jack-knife,  and  a  flask  of  tea  about  with  him  on  his  voyages;  but 
the  only  real  strait  he  was  ever  in  at  sea  found  him  without  them. 
From  that  time  he  gave  up  carrying  anything  of  the  kind  and 
trusted  to  the  higher  powers." 

Holmes's  tribute  of  affection  follows:  — 

"Our  Poet,  who  has  taught  the  Western  breeze 
To  waft  his  songs  before  him  o'er  the  seas, 
Will  find  them  wheresoe'er  his  wanderings  reach 
Borne  on  the  spreading  tide  of  English  speech, 
Twin  with  the  rhythmic  waves  that  kiss  the  farthest  beach. 

"  Where  shall  the  singing  bird  a  stranger  be 
That  finds  a  nest  for  him  in  every  tree? 
How  shall  he  travel  who  can  never  go 
Where  his  own  voice  the  echoes  do  not  know. 
Where  his  own  garden  flowers  no  longer  learn  to  grow.^ 

**Ah!  gentlest  soul!  how  gracious,  how  benign 
Breathes  through  our  troubled  life  that  voice  of  thine, 
Filled  with  a  sweetness  born  of  happier  spheres, 
That  wins  and  warms,  that  kindles,  softens,  cheers. 
That  calms  the  wildest  woe  and  stays  the  bitterest  tears! 

*' Forgive  the  simple  words  that  sound  like  praise; 
The  mist  before  me  dims  my  gilded  phrase; 

*  Longfellow's  friend  and  constant  correspondent,  George  W.  Greene,  of  Newport. 
^  Several  very  striking  specimens  of  the  Romaic,  or  Modern  Greek,  poetry  of  the 
Klephts  were  published  in  the  Dial  in  an  article  by  Margaret  Fuller. 


i868  45 1 

Our  speech  at  best  is  half  alive  and  cold, 

And,  save  that  tenderer  moments  make  us  bold, 

Our  whitening  lips  would  close,  their  truest  truth  untold. 

"We  who  behold  our  autumn  sun  below 
The  Scorpion's  sign,  against  the  Archer's  bow. 
Know  well  what  parting  means  of  friend  from  friend  ,- 
After  the  snows  no  freshening  dews  descend, 
And  what  the  frost  has  marred,  the  sunshine  will  not  mend. 

"So  we  all  count  the  months,  the  weeks,  the  days. 
That  keep  thee  from  us  in  unwonted  ways. 
Grudging  to  alien  hearths  our  widowed  time; 
And  one  has  shaped  a  breath  in  artless  rhyme 
That  sighs,  'We  track  thee  still  through  each  remotest  clime.' 

"What  wishes,  longings,  blessings,  prayers  shall  be 
The  more  than  golden  freight  that  floats  with  thee! 
And  know  whatever  welcome  thou  shalt  find,  — 
Thou,  who  hast  won  the  hearts  of  half  mankind,  — 
The  proudest,  fondest  love  thou  leavest  still  behind!" 

It  Is  probably  true  that  no  American  ever  landed  In  England 
who  had  won  his  welcome  from  so  many  hearts,  from  palace  to 
thatched  cottage  or  slated  tenement.  From  Windsor  Castle  he 
received  an  Intimation  that  the  Queen  would  be  sorry  to  have 
Mr.  Longfellow  pass  through  England  without  her  meeting  him, 
naming  a  day  for  his  visit;  dinners  were  given  In  his  honour  and 
invitations  came  from  many  Interesting  and  distinguished  people. 
He  wrote  to  Mr.  Fields:  "I  have  so  many,  many  things  to  tell 
you  that  there  would  be  no  end.  .  .  .  Among  them  is  Tennyson's 
reading  'Boadlcea'  to  me  at  midnight.  A  memorable  night."  ^ 
Soon  the  poet  fled  to  the  Lakes  and  mountains  for  respite,  but  was 
summoned  thence  for  academic  laurels.  From  the  Scottish  Border, 
"I  swooped  down  to  Cambridge  and  there  had  a  scarlet  gown  put 
on  me,  and  the  students  shouted,  'Three  cheers  for  the  red  man 
of  the  West!'" 

A  month  after  Longfellow's  sailing,  Norton  took  ship  for  Eng- 
land with  his  venerable  mother,  his  two  sisters,  his  wife  and  little 

^  It  may  amuse  the  older  Harvard  Graduates  in  the  Saturday  Club  to  hear  Longfellow's 
description  of  Tennyson  in  a  letter  to  Lowell:  "If  two  men  should  try  to  look  alike,  they 
could  not  do  it  better  than  Tennyson  and  Professor  Levering  do  without  trying.".^ 


452  The  Saturday  Club 

children,  thus  being  foot-free  for  a  long  residence  abroad,  in  serious 
yet  delightful  study  of  things  that  most  interested,  and  the  form- 
ing or  continuing  many  friendships.  These  years  were  fitting  him 
for  the  work  that  lay  before  him  on  his  return  (though  he  as  yet 
did  not  know  of  it)  as  a  helper  and  illuminator  of  many  lives.  The 
Nortons  lived  for  some  months  in  a  pleasant  rectory  in  Kent. 

The  following  account  of  the  August  meeting  of  the  Club  we 
owe  to  Mrs.  Fields's  notes  of  what  her  husband  told  her:  — 

"August  30th.  Saturday  Club;  a  small  company  of  ten,  but 
brilliant  and  social.  Emerson,  Sumner,  Holmes,  Hoar,  Dana, 
S.  G.  Howe,  Estes  Howe,  Mr.  Fields,  etc.  Sumner  talked  more 
than  the  rest.  'More  of  the  Capitolian  Jove  than  ever,'  said  Mr. 
Fields,  'but  the  talk  was  interesting.'  It  was  amusing  to  see 
Holmes  fly  up  with  his  light  weapons  to  attack  the  conversation, 
only  to  find  himself  repulsed  by  Sumner  in  his  citadel.  .  .  . 

"There  was  some  talk  of  Motley,  who  said  he  could  get  no  one 
in  London  to  print  his  first  history.  Therefore,  though  he  could 
ill  afford  it,  he  printed  a  thousand  copies  at  his  own  expense  and 
had  them  circulated.  The  book  became  an  enormous  success  at 
once,  and  as  he  had  no  copyright,  it  was  pirated  by  five  houses 
in  London  and  two  in  Edinburgh.  He  was  pursued  by  letters 
from  every  publisher  in  London  for  his  second  book,  and  his  works 
have  been  translated  into  Russian  and  Chinese,  as  well  as  many 
other  languages.  It  has  been  said  into  as  many  as  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin. 

"His  novels,  his  first  ventures,  were  printed  in  Boston  by 
Munroe.  They  had  some  merit,  but  the  publisher,  either  through 
idleness  or  carelessness,  did  little  or  nothing  about  them.  A 
gentleman  —  I  think  Mr.  Phillips  of  Phillips  and  Sampson  — 
told  Mr.  Fields  that  after  the  failure  of  his  first  novels,  he  went 
to  see  Mr.  Motley  one  day  and  found  him  with  large  books 
strewn  about  on  the  floor.  'What  are  you  going  to  do  now,  Mr. 
Motley?'  'I  am  hunting  up  matter  for  the  history  of  the  Dutch 
Republic'  The  visit  over,  Mr.  Phillips  went  away,  saying  to  him- 
self, 'Another  of  Motley's  failures.  This  young  man-about-town 
will  not  do  much  with  those  books.'    Six  months  later,  he  called 


i868  453 

again.  '  How  does  your  work  come  on,  Motley  ? '  '  Well ' ;  he  replied, 
'  and  I  have  just  taken  passage  for  Europe  to  continue  it  there.' 
He  could  hardly  have  been  more  than  thirty  years  old  then,  and 
now  he  is  just  fifty-four,  and  was  over  forty  when  the  book  which 
made  his  fame  at  last  appeared.  Now  all  the  honours  which  the 
world  has  to  give  are  heaped  upon  him.  In  speaking  of  Longfel- 
low's luncheon  lately  with  the  Queen,  Motley  said  he  had  gone 
down,  when  he  was  a  young  author,  to  pass  a  few  days  at  Bal- 
moral with  Lord  John  Russell.  They  were  in  the  garden  one 
morning,  when  a  message  came  from  Her  Majesty,  who  was  then 
at  her  castle  there,  saying  she  wished  to  see  Sir  John.  Asking 
to  be  excused,  he  went  immediately  to  the  Queen,  who  begged 
him  to  return  to  fetch  Mr.  Motley  to  see  them.  The  carriage  drove 
back,  Motley  was  told  to  jump  in  as  he  was,  in  his  shooting- 
jacket,  and  they  returned  together,  to  pass  a  most  social  and 
agreeable  morning  with  the  Queen  and  Prince  Albert.  .  .  . 

"At  a  large  dinner,  Mr.  Fields  watched  the  meeting  between 
Mr.  Sumner  and  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  who  had  formerly 
been  great  friends,  but  who  differed  and  separated,  after  Mr. 
Adams  was  chosen  to  go  to  England,  on  some  question  connected 
with  our  political  relations  with  that  country.  He  saw  the  blood 
flush  over  Mr.  Adams's  face  as  Sumner  addressed  him.  The  inter- 
view was  evidently  becoming  very  painful  when  Mr.  Fields  went 
forward  and  broke  it  up  by  addressing  Mr.  Adams.  The  latter 
showed  his  gratitude  by  turning  to  him  and  extending  both  hands 
in  a  cordial  manner  most  rare  with  him  at  any  time.  .  .  . 

"Mr.  Fields  advanced  the  subject  of  copyright,  at  table,  telling 
Mr.  Sumner  he  hoped  that  question  would  still  be  foremost  in  his 
mind,  as  he  advanced  to  take  his  place  in  the  new  government. 
'But  do  you  know,'  asked  Sumner  in  his  most  serious  way,  'what 
a  pecuniary  loss  it  would  be  to  your  house  to  have  this  measure 
carried.?'  'Yes,'  said  Mr.  Fields,  ^ hut  fiat  justitia,  mat  Fields, 
Osgood  &  Co.'  Of  course  a  hearty  laugh  was  the  immediate 
response." 

During  the  summer,  Lowell  was  preparing  for  publication  his  sec- 
ond volume  of  poems  (if  we  count  out  the  two  series  of  "Biglow 
Papers")  wisely  excluding  from  it  humorous  poems.    "They  can 


454  The  Saturday  Club 

come  by  and  by,  if  they  are  wanted.  They  would  jar  here,"  he 
said.  He  called  the  book  Under  the  Willows.  The  burden  of  the 
North  American  Review  now  fell  back  upon  his  shoulders,  as  Nor- 
ton had  gone  for  an  indefinite  period,  and  Professor  Gurney,  his 
deputy,  was  taken  ill. 

Mr.  Scudder,  in  his  biography  of  Lowell,  to  which  I  am  greatly 
indebted,  tells  a  story  showing  his  generosity,  when  we  consider 
how  recent  was  the  war,  and  the  death  in  battle  of  so  many  sons 
of  the  Lowell  race.  The  letters  and  journals  of  a  Virginian  gentle- 
man who  had  visited  New  England  in  1834  were  shown  to  him 
with  a  view  to  the  possibility  of  their  publication.  Lowell,  having 
read  them,  said,  in  a  letter  to  Godkin,  editor  of  the  Nation:  "I 
confess  to  a  strong  sympathy  with  men  who  sacrificed  everything, 
even  to  a  bad  cause,  which  they  could  see  only  the  good  side  of; 
and  now  the  war  is  over,  I  see  no  way  to  heal  the  old  wounds  but 
by  frankly  admitting  this  and  acting  upon  it.  We  can  never  re- 
construct the  South  except  through  its  own  leading  men,  nor  ever 
hope  to  have  them  on  our  side  till  we  make  it  for  their  interest  and 
compatible  with  their  honour  to  be  so."  These  journals,  with  an 
introduction  by  Lowell,  ran  through  several  numbers  of  the 
Atlantic  in  1870. 

We  find  in  a  letter  written  by  Norton  this  pleasant  description 
of  a  friendly  gathering  during  this  autumn:  "When  I  was  with 
Ruskin  in  Paris  we  had  a  delightful  little  partie  carree  —  he  and 
Longfellow,  and  Tom  Appleton  and  I ;  they  had  never  met  before. 
Ruskin  had  written  me  two  or  three  weeks  ago  of  their  meeting." 
Longfellow's  few  words  express  with  exquisite  felicity  the  impres- 
sion that  Ruskin  would  make  on  one  of  keen  and  delicately  sym- 
pathetic insight,  and  express  at  the  same  time  the  prevailing 
temper  of  his  mind.  "At  Verona,"  he  says,  "we  passed  a  delight- 
ful day  with  Ruskin.  I  shall  never  forget  a  glimpse  I  had  of  him 
mounted  on  a  ladder,  copying  some  details  of  the  tomb  of  Can 
Grande.  He  was  very  pleasant  in  every  way,  but,  I  thought,  very 
sad:  suffering  too  keenly  from  what  is  inevitable  and  beyond 
remedy,  and  making  himself 

*A  second  nature,  to  exist  in  pain 
As  in  his  own  allotted  element.'" 


i868  455 

In  November,  General  Grant  was  elected  President  of  the 
United  States. 

It  should  have  been  mentioned  that,  in  this  and  the  previous 
year,  Mr.  Dana  served  in  the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  and 
made  there  several  noted  speeches,  among  others  his  argument 
on  the  repeal  of  the  usury  laws,  a  bill  for  which  was  unexpectedly 
carried  in  that  body  as  the  result  of  this  speech,  which  has  been 
reprinted  for  use  before  the  Legislatures  of  other  States. 

No  new  member  was  chosen  into  the  Club  during  this  year. 


Chapter  XVI 
1869 

How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught 
That  serveth  not  another's  will; 
Whose  armour  is  his  honest  thought. 
And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill; 

Who  envies  none  that  chance  doth  raise. 
Or  vice;  who  never  understood 
How  deepest  wounds  are  given  by  praise; 
Nor  rules  of  State,  but  rules  of  good.  1 

Sir  Henry  Wotton 

THE  New  Year  came  In  cheerfully  because  of  the  confidence 
of  the  country  at  large  in  the  strength,  common  sense,  and 
humanity  of  their  great  General.  The  Club  had  reason  to  be 
gratified  in  his  appointments  of  Motley  as  Minister  to  the  Court 
of  St.  James,  and  Judge  Hoar  in  the  Cabinet  as  Attorney-General. 
As  a  result,  April  would  find  two  empty  chairs  at  "Parker's," 
besides  those  of  Longfellow  and  Norton.  The  former,  after  a 
happy  residence  during  the  winter  on  the  Lung'  Arno  in  Florence, 
and  on  the  site  of  Sallust's  villa  in  Rome,  moved  his  family  south- 
ward in  spring  to  a  villa  in  beautiful  Sorrento.  Norton,  though  he 
had  made  an  excursion  with  Ruskin  into  northern  France,  had  been 
mainly  In  England  rejoicing  in  the  meeting  of  interesting  persons, 
Carlyle,  the  Leweses,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Burne-Jones,  and  William 
Morris.  Fields  and  his  wife  sailed  for  Europe  in  the  spring,  having 
won  the  favour  from  Lowell  of  taking  his  only  daughter  with  them 
on  their  excursion.  Lowell  thanks  Fields  "for  leaving  a  most  deli- 
cate loophole  for  my  pride  in  conferring  on  me  a  kind  of  militia 
generalship  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  while  you  were  away"  and 

offers  to  make  it  something  real  by  reading  proofs,  preventing 

from  writing  such  awful  English,  and  acting  at  need  as  consulting 
physician. 

^  The  direct  and  honourable  conduct  of  Motley  suggests  the  motto. 


i869 


457 


The  following  letters  that  passed  between  two  members  of  the 
Club,  and  bring  in  two  others,  should  find  place  in  our  annals  as 
witnessing  to  the  friendships  and  the  patriotism  of  those  concerned. 

Judge  Hoar,  writing  from  Washington  to  Lowell,  in  March, 
after  his  call  to  the  Cabinet,  as  Attorney-General,  thanking  him 
for  his  "hurrah"  of  congratulation,  fears  that  his  appointment 
may  do  more  harm  than  good  by  blocking  the  way  for  good  men  of 
Massachusetts.  "  I  have  already  expressed,"  he  says, "  the  opinion 
that  you  ought  to  go  as  Minister  to  Spain  or  Austria  (the  latter, 
of  course,  only  in  case  Motley  goes  to  London),  and  that  either 
Boutwell  or  I,  or  both  of  us,  if  necessary,  ought  to  quit  the  Cabinet, 
if  it  stood  in  the  way  of  such  a  public  benefaction.  But  I  feel  very 
much  like  an  intruder,  and  can  only  say  that,  while  I  am  about, 
the  President  shall  have  as  much  honest  counsel,  given  with  such 
directness  and  earnestness  as  the  opportunity  may  allow,  as  I  am 
able  to  furnish,  and  that,  whenever  my  duty  in  that  behalf  ceases, 
no  one  can  be  more  glad  of  it  than  myself." 

Lowell  wrote  in  his  reply :  — 

"I  did  not  look  for  any  answer  to  my  letter,  knowing  how  over- 
whelmed you  must  be  with  business.  But  I  can't  help  answer- 
ing your  letter,  knowing  that  a  whiff  of  Massachusetts  must  be  a 
cordial  to  you  where  you  are. 

"If  you  could  have  heard  the  talk  at  Club  on  Saturday,  you 
would  have  been  pleased.  Did  n't  you  notice  any  burning  of  the 
ears  between  three  and  four  o'clock  on  that  day.?  Everybody  was 
warm  about  you,  and  not  merely  that,  but  (what  I  liked  better) 
everybody  was  glad  of  the  gain  the  Country  had  made  in  you.  It 
was  all  very  sweet  to  me,  you  may  be  sure,  but  it  would  have 
pleased  you  most  (as  it  did  me)  to  hear  Emerson,  whose  good  word 
about  a  man's  character  is  like  being  knighted  on  the  field  of  battle. 
It  is  so,  at  least,  to  you  and  me  who  know  him.  Generally,  you 
know,  we  are  apt  to  congratulate  a  man  on  getting  an  office,  but 
in  this  case  we  all  wished  the  office  joy  of  getting  the  man.  In 
short,  it  was  just  what  you  deserved  and  what  an  honest  man  may 
fairly  like  to  hear  of. 

"Never  dream  of  quitting  your  place.  A  man  with  the  head  and 
heart  that  you  have,  who  knows  the  good  and  evil  of  politics,  is 


45  S  T^he  Saturday  Club 

just  what  the  President  wants.  He  has  an  eye  for  men  and  will 
not  part  with  you.  You,  who  might  have  had  any  place  that 
Massachusetts  had  to  give,  either  State  or  National,  and  who  chose 
rather  the  line  of  duty  than  that  of  ambition,  are  in  your  right 
place,  whoever  else  Is.  We  are  apt  to  say  that  Honour  seeks  out 
such  men,  and  so  she  does,  but  promotion  Is  not  so  quick-eyed  and 
finds  them  less  seldom. 

"  I  am  not  speaking  out  of  gratitude,  though  the  tears  came  Into 
my  eyes  when  I  read  your  generous  words.  I  know  that  some  of 
my  friends  had  talked  of  me  for  some  place  abroad,  but  I  thought 
it  had  blown  over  long  ago.  I  need  not  say  I  should  like  some  small 
place,  like  Switzerland,  which  I  could  afford.  Spain,  of  course, 
would  be  delicious  —  but  I  have  no  'claims'  and  would  not  stand 
in  anybody's  way,  least  of  all  in  Motley's.  Your  letter  startled  me. 
I  had  no  notion  I  had  been  spoken  of  anywhere  but  here,  and  a 
mission  could  hardly  please  me  more  than  your  speaking  of  me  so 
warmly,  nor  indeed  would  be  worth  so  much." 

Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson,  who  had  succeeded  Mr.  Adams  in  the 
English  Mission,  had  negotiated  with  Lord  Clarendon,  British 
Foreign  Secretary,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  previous  year,  a  treaty 
with  regard  to  the  American  claims  for  damages  wrought  by  the 
cruiser  Alabama.  This  treaty,  discussed  in  Congress,  had  been 
carried  over  into  1869,  when  It  was  rejected  by  the  all  but  unani- 
mous vote  of  the  Senate.  This  was  because  Mr.  Sumner,  then 
chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs,  had  in  a  notable 
speech  advocated  the  adding  of  a  new  feature,  claims  for  "indi- 
rect damages."  Mr.  Morse  in  his  Lije  of  Adams  says  that  the 
latter,  on  hearing  of  Sumner's  speech,  at  once  said  its  effect  would 
be  "to  raise  the  scale  of  our  demands  of  reparation  so  very  high, 
that  there  is  no  chance  of  negotiation  left,  unless  the  English 
have  lost  all  their  spirit  and  character";  and  added  that  Motley, 
before  setting  forth  on  his  mission,  had  called  on  him:  "He  seems 
anxious  to  do  his  best,  but  his  embarrassment  is  considerable  in 
one  particular  which  never  affected  me,  and  that  Is,  having  two 
masters.  Mr.  Seward  never  permitted  any  interference  of  the 
Senate  or  Mr.  Sumner  with  his  direction  of  the  policy." 


i869 


459 


Motley  was  cordially  welcomed  In  England,  but  this  letter,  writ- 
ten to  Dr.  Holmes  in  April,  shows  that  he  foresaw  difficulties,  as 
he  looked  around  on  his  new  horizon,  and  they  appeared  all  too 
soon.   Rewrote:  — 

"I  feel  anything  but  exultation  at  present  —  rather  the  op- 
posite sensation.  I  feel  that  I  am  placed  higher  than  I  deserve, 
and  at  the  same  time  that  I  am  taking  greater  responsibilities 
than  ever  were  assumed  by  me  before.  You  will  be  indulgent  to 
my  mistakes  and  shortcomings  —  and  who  can  expect  to  avoid 
them.?  But  the  world  will  be  cruel,  and  the  times  are  threatening. 
I  shall  do  my  best  —  but  the  best  will  be  poor  enough  —  and  keep 
'a  heart  for  any  fate.'" 

By  midsummer  Mr.  Motley  received  from  Hamilton  Fish,  the 
Secretary  of  State,  some  criticisms  on  his  official  dealings  with 
Earl  Clarendon,  together  with  approval  of  his  general  course. 
Mr.  Motley  rectified  the  mistake  complained  of,  and  all  seemed 
to  go  well. 

Through  the  summer  came  letters  from  Longfellow  In  Italy 
telling  of  her  perfume  and  sweetness,  but  "a  little  weary  of  this 
vita  beata  by  the  seaside  with  nothing  to  do,  —  or  am  I  hurried  by 
what  still  remains  to  be  done,?" 

And  again  he  wrote  to  a  friend:  "As  a  child  of  my  century,  I 

infinitely  prefer  our  American  prose  to  this  kind  of  European 

poetry.   And  as  the  Roman  ritornello  sings,  — 

Se  il  Papa  mi  donasse  Campidoglio 

E  mi  dicesse  'Lascia  andar'  'sta  figUa/  — 

Quella  che  amava  prima,  quella  voglio. ' '  * 

An  English  friend  forwarded  to  him  this  tribute  from  E.  J. 
Reed,  C.  B.,  "the  Chief  Constructor  of  our  Navy,  and  one  of  the 
greatest  ship-builders  the  world  ever  produced,  In  which  he  speaks 
most  highly  of  your  poem  'The  Building  of  the  Ship,'  as  follows :  — 

"' Admiralty,  July  20. 

"'I  should  have  been  so  pleased  to  meet,  and  pay  my  profound 
respects  to,  the  author  of  the  finest  poem  on  ship-building  that 

^  If  the  Pope  should  give  me  Campidoglio, 
And  should  say,  "Let  this  damsel  depart,"  —  [America,] 
Her  whom  I  first  loved,  her  I  desire. 


4^0  "The  Saturday  Club 


ever  was   or  probably  ever  will   be  written  —  a  poem   which  I 
often  read  with  truest  pleasure.'" 

On  his  way  through  England  to  take  ship  for  America  Long- 
fellow received  from  Oxford  University  the  degree  of  D.C.L. 

In  August,  the  Longfellows  sailed  for  home.  On  the  first  day 
of  September  this  letter  records:  "We  reached  home  to-day  at  sun- 
set. .  .  .  How  strange  and  how  familiar  it  all  seems,  and  how  thank- 
ful I  am  to  have  brought  my  little  flock  back  to  the  fold.  The 
young  voices  and  little  feet  are  musical  overhead;  and  the  Year 
of  Travels  floats  away  and  dissolves  like  a  Fata  Morgana.  .  .  . 
The  quiet  and  rest  are  welcome  after  the  surly  sea";  and  he  forth- 
with pays  his  taxes,  "which  gives  one  a  home  feeling." 

Appleton  returned  with  the  family.  Holmes,  in  a  letter  to  Mot- 
ley, furnishes  us  with  this  picture:  "Walking  on  the  bridge  ...  I 
met  a  barouche  with  Miss  G.  and  a  portly  mediaeval  gentleman 
at  her  side.  I  thought  it  was  a  ghost  almost,  when  the  barouche 
stopped  and  out  jumped  Tom  Appleton  in  the  flesh,  and  plenty 
of  it,  as  aforetime.  We  embraced  —  or  rather  he  embraced  me  and 
I  partially  spanned  his  goodly  circumference.  He  has  been  twice 
here — the  last  time,  he  took  tea  and  stayed  till  near  eleven,  pour- 
ing out  all  the  time  such  a  torrent  of  talk,  witty,  entertaining, 
audacious,  ingenious,  sometimes  extravagant,  but  fringed  always 
with  pleasing  fancies  as  deep  as  the  border  of  a  Queen's  cashmere, 
that  my  mind  came  out  of  it  as  my  body  would  out  of  a  Turkish 
bath,  every  joint  snapped  and  its  hard  epidermis  taken  clean  off 
in  that  four  hours'  immersion.  Tom  was  really  wonderful,  I  think. 
I  never  heard  such  a  fusillade  in  my  life." 

Emerson  sent  this  greeting  to  his  friend :  — 

"My  dear  Longfellow:  First,  I  rejoice  that  you  are  safe  at 
home;  and,  as  all  mankind  know,  full  of  happy  experiences,  of 
which  I  wished  to  gather  some  scraps  at  the  Club  on  Saturday. 
To  my  dismay,  at  midnight  I  discovered  that  I  had  utterly  for- 
gotten the  existence  of  the  Club.  Yesterday,  I  met  Appleton, 
who  ludicrously  consoled  me  by  affirming  that  yourself  and  him- 
self had  made  the  same  slip.  I  entreat  you  not  to  fail  on  the  thir- 
tieth of  October.  ..." 


i869  461 

■  September  14  was  the  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  birth  of 
Alexander  von  Humboldt,  and  the  Boston  Society  of  Natural 
History  celebrated  the  day.  Agassiz  was  the  orator.  Emerson 
records  that  his  discourse  was  "strong,  nothing  to  spare,  not  a 
weak  point,  no  rhetoric,  and  no  falsetto:  his  personal  recollections 
and  anecdotes  of  their  intercourse,  simple,  frank,  and  tender  in  the 
tone  of  voice  too,  no  error  of  egotism  or  of  self-assertion.  .  .  .  He 
is  quite  as  good  a  man,  too,  as  his  hero,  and  not  to  be  duplicated 
I  fear."  Dr.  Holmes,  in  a  letter,  said:  "Of  course  I  wrote  a  poem 
.  .  .  which  I  read  at  the  soiree  afterwards.  I  thought  well  of  it,  as 
I  am  apt  to,  and  others  liked  it." 

In  this  difficult  period  of  Reconstruction,  many  Senators  whom 
the  President  was  anxious  not  to  disaffect  were  seeking  places  for 
friends  of  doubtful  politics  or  character,  both  from  him  and  Judge 
Hoar.  The  Judge  looked  only  to  loyalty  and  fitness,  and  this  atti- 
tude was  not  always  pleasing  to  those  who  urged  him  to  oblige 
them,  and  his  answers  never  sacrificed  clearness  for  the  sake  of 
seeming  agreeable.  The  pressure  on  the  President  to  get  rid  of 
this  obstructive  and  formidable  conscience  in  his  Cabinet  was  very 
great.  Grant  saw  one  way  open  of  conciliating  the  Senate  and  yet 
showing  appreciation  of  Judge  Hoar,  for  whose  wisdom  and  in- 
tegrity he  had  great  respect  and  whom  he  personally  liked  well. 
He  nominated  him  for  the  Supreme  Court,  an  eminently  fitting 
honour,  and  this  might  open  a  place  in  his  Cabinet  for  another. 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  wrote  to  the  Judge,  saying,  "A  great 
mission  has  been  forced  upon  you,  nothing  less  than  to  return  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States  to  its  proper  function." 

Mr.  Adams  in  his  tribute  to  the  Judge's  memory  in  1905  said:  — 
"One  winter  afternoon,  years  ago,  I  remember  we  got  jesting 
with  him  over  the  table  of  the  Saturday  Club  upon  his  supposed 
roughness  of  manner  and  sharpness  of  tongue,  while  he  himself 
entered  into  the  spirit  of  our  badinage  most  keenly  of  all ;  and  then, 
without  the  slightest  indication  of  feeling  or  irritation,  but  with 
strong  humour,  he  repeated  the  remark  of  Senator  Cameron  of 
Pennsylvania,  .  .  .  explanatory  of  that  Senate  rejection,  'What 
could  you  expect  for  a  man  who  had  snubbed  seventy  Senators!' 


462  'T'he  Saturday  Club 

—  seventy  then  being  the  full  Chamber.  That  way  of  putting 
it  undoubtedly  had  a  basis,  and  no  little  basis,  of  truth.  Judge 
Hoar  at  the  time  —  and,  be  it  also  remembered,  it  was  the  time 
of  the  so-called  Reconstruction  of  the  subdued  South  —  Judge 
Hoar  was  then,  I  say,  head  of  the  Department  of  Justice.  As 
such,  he  had  a  large  patronage  to  distribute,  and  was  brought  in 
close  contact  with  many  eager  applicants  and  their  senatorial 
patrons.  His  sense  of  humour  on  such  occasions  did  not  always 
have  time  to  come  to  his  rescue,  and  it  was  commonly  alleged  of 
him  that  in  political  parlance,  'he  could  not  see  things';  the  real 
fact  being  that  with  his  rugged  honesty  and  keen  eye  for  pretence 
and  jobbery  he  saw  things  only  too  clearly.  And  so,  first  and  last, 
he  'snubbed  seventy  Senators,'  .  .  .  and  they,  after  their  kind,  in 
due  time,  'got  even  with  him,'  as  some  among  them  doubtless 
expressed  it. 

"Then  it  was,  under  this  undeserved  stigma,  twice  repeated  — 
first  in  the  State  House  at  Boston,^  next  in  the  Capitol  at  Washing- 
ton —  then  it  was  that  the  metal  of  the  man's  nature  returned  its 
true  ring.   He  wore  defeat  as  't  were  a  laurel  crown." 

The  Senate  by  a  very  large  vote  refused  to  confirm  the  nomi- 
nation. So  Judge  Hoar  remained  in  the  Cabinet  on  good  terms 
with  the  President  whose  dilemma  remained  unsolved  for  some 
months. 

In  writing  to  Mr.  Norton,  Lowell  speaks  of  the  time  in  spring 
"when  I  thought  it  possible  I  might  be  sent  abroad  [on  a  mis- 
sion]. ...  It  fell  through,  and  I  am  glad  it  did,  for  I  should  not 
have  written  my  new  poem."  This  was  "The  Cathedral,"  at  first 
called  "A  Day  in  Chartres."  It  was  dedicated  to  Fields.  Lowell 
was  happy  in  it,  and  its  reception.  He  said,  "There  seems  to  be 
a  bit  of  clean  carving  here  and  there,  a  solid  buttress  or  two,  and 
perhaps  a  gleam  through  painted  glass." 

Christmas,  that  year,  came  on  the  last  Saturday  of  the  month. 
Writing  to  Dana  from  Washington  the  Judge  said:  "The  Satur- 
day Club,  which  should  meet  to-day,  I  am  informed  is  disposed 

^  He  had,  some  time  before,  been  nominated  for  a  Justice  of  the  Massachusetts  Supreme 
Court,,  but  failed  of  the  appointment  because  of  the  opposition  of  persons  who  bore  a 
grudge  because  of  the  sharpness  of  his  speech  on  occasion. 


i869  463 

gracefully  to  give  way  to  Christmas  as  the  older  institution,  and 
will  dine  at  Parker's  on  Monday." 

A  matter,  in  which  three  members  of  our  Club  were  directly 
active,  and  which  was  important  to  scholars,  especially  Harvard 
men,  came  to  a  head,  this  year,  namely,  Carlyle's  munificent  gift 
to  the  University.  His  hostility,  coarsely  expressed,  towards  the 
Northern  States  during  the  war  had  led  Emerson,  after  strong 
protest,  to  cease  writing  to  him. 

Carlyle  had  taken  kindly  to  Mr.  Norton,  then  in  London,  and 
had  by  him  and  others  been  enlightened  on  the  great  issue.  In  a 
letter,  Norton  told  how  Carlyle  one  day  said  to  him:  "In  writing 
about  Cromwell  and  Friedrich  I  have  chanced  to  get  together  some 
things  not  wholly  worthless,  nor  yet  easy  to  find,  and,  I  've  thought 
I  should  like,  when  I  die,  to  leave  these  books  to  some  institution 
in  New  England  where  they  might  be  preserved,  and  where  they 
would  serve  as  a  testimony  of  my  appreciation  o'  the  goodness 
o'  your  people  towards  me,  and  o'  the  many  acts  o'  kindness  they 
have  done  me;  and  perhaps  you  can  help  me  to  have  this  rightly 
done." 

Hearing  this  good  decision  Mr.  Emerson  wrote  to  Norton: 
"I  see  no  bar  to  the  design,  which  is  lovely  and  redeeming  in 
Carlyle,  and  will  make  us  all  affectionate  again.  Your  own  letter 
to  him  I  found  perfect  in  its  instructions,  in  its  feeling  and  tone. 
I  am  looking  for  a  final  letter  from  him  .  .  .  and  shall  then  carry 
my  report  to  President  Eliot." 

In  the  running  history  of  the  activities  of  the  members  of  the 
Club  in  their  various  helpful  or  illuminating  courses,  hardly  any 
mention  has  been  made  of  Dr.  Hedge,  metaphysician,  scholar,  and 
highly  valued  preacher  in  the  Unitarian  Church  in  Brookline. 
In  December  of  this  year  he  sent  to  Dr.  Holmes  his  newly  pub- 
lished Reason  in  Religion. 

Dr.  Hedge,  regarding  lovingly  the  Old  Testament,  wrote  to  this 
student  of  advancing  science  that  he  need  not  read  the  book.  His 
friend  replies:  "I  have  read  it,  every  word  of  it.  ...  I  have  had 
too  much  pleasure  in  reading  it  to  be  denied  the  privilege  of  telling 
you  how  I  have  enjoyed  it.  I  am  struck  with  the  union  of  free 
thought  with  reverential  feeling.   It  is  strange  how  we  read  these 


4^4  "The  Saturday  Club 

stories  like  children  until  some  wiser  teacher  shows  us  the  full- 
grown  meaning  they  hide  under  their  beautiful  simple  forms." 

Dr.  Holmes  then  speaks  of  the  poetical  style  of  this  book,  and 
calls  attention  to  the  unconscious  rhythm  that  crops  out  every- 
where through  prose  discourses:  — 

"Here  are  some  of  the  verses:  — 
^  'As  slow  as  that  which  shaped  the  solid  earth  by  long  accretion 
from  the  fiery  deep.* 

'A  veritable  piece  of  history,  embracing  centuries  in  its  term 
and  scope,  that  wondrous  tower  of  Babel  is  a  fact.* 

"  Pray  tell  me  if  you  knew  you  were  writing  verse,  or  were  you 
in  the  case  of  M.  Jourdin.?"  ^ 

Longfellow,  sending  wishes  for  a  Merry  Christmas  to  the 
house  of  Fields,  exclaims:  "What  dusky  splendours  of  song  are 
in  King  Alfred's  new  volume!  .  .  .  His  'Holy  GraiF  and  Lowell's 
*  Cathedral*  .  .  .  with  such  good  works  you  can  go  forward  to  meet 
the  New  Year  with  conscience  void  of  reproach." 

Fields  was  just  withdrawing  from  the  publishing  house,  to  give 
himself  to  literature  and  lectures. 

*  In  this  year  a  second  artist  was  added  to  the  membership  of  the 
Club,  eager  and  charming  in  his  painting  and  his  conversation, 
William  Morris  Hunt. 

^  Was  it  he  that  only  learned  in  adult  life  that  he  had  been  talking  prose  unconsciously 
through  all  the  years? 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  HUNT 

After  Allston's  death  the  interest  In  art  which  his  noble  personal- 
ity and  work  had  begun  to  awaken  in  Puritan  and  commercial 
Boston  languished,  although  the  more  frequent  visits  to  Europe 
of  such  men  as  Ward  and  Appleton,  Brimmer  and  Norton  kept  the 
spark  alive.  Rowse  had  been  brought  into  the  Club  rather  as  a 
friend  than  artist.  William  Hunt  came  back  from  France  the  year 
of  its  founding,  and,  though  he  lived  at  first  in  Newport,  the  heat 
of  his  enthusiasm  began  to  be  felt  in  Boston.  Yet  not  until  1869 
was  his  brilliant  presence  added  to  the  membership.  He  was  then 
forty-nine  years  old  and  at  the  height  of  his  powers. 

Born  in  Brattleboro,  and  his  father  dying  when  his  children 
were  all  very  young,  their  mother,  a  superior  woman,  whose  yearn- 
ings for  art  as  a  girl  had  been  frowned  on,  determined  to  give  her 
five  children  every  opportunity.  She  moved  to  New  Haven,  found 
an  Italian  artist,  and  she  and  all  of  them  took  lessons  of  him.  Rich- 
ard, the  second  son,  became  a  distinguished  architect.  William 
at  sixteen  entered  Harvard,  was  a  bright  scholar,  but  the  artistic 
temperament  compelled  him  to  music,  drawing,  and  to  the  woods 
and  meadows.  So,  as  "too  fond  of  amusement,"  he  was  rusticated 
to  Stockbridge  —  no  hardship  for  him.  Some  one  there,  perhaps 
the  clergyman  who  had  him  in  charge,  saw  in  him  "A  soul  let 
loose,  an  inspiration  to  all  who  met  him." 

Troubled  by  William's  persistent  cough,  Mrs.  Hunt  determined 
that  he  should  not  return  to  college  then,  and  with  all  her  children 
valiantly  sailed  for  Italy.  This  changed  the  course  of  William's 
life.  It  had  been  planned  that,  after  a  year,  he  should  go  back, 
finish  his  course  at  Harvard,  and  then  study  to  be  a  surgeon. 
Rome  decreed  that  he  should  be  an  artist;  his  passion  for  art  led 
his  mother  to  stay  abroad  with  her  family.  He  wished  to  be  a 
sculptor,  and  began  modelling  in  the  studio  of  H.  K.  Brown. 

Copying  the  work  of  the  past  in  Rome  did  not  appeal  to  Wil- 
liam, but  he  found  delight  in  Paris  where  he  worked  under  Barye, 
meaning  to  become  a  sculptor.  Then,  following  the  custom  of  the 


4^6  "The  Saturday  Club 

times,  he  went  to  Diisseldorf  and  began  the  usual  drill  there. 
He  hated  it  and  went  away.  On  his  return  to  Paris  he  saw  in  a 
window  the  "Falconer,"  by  Couture.  Stirred  by  this,  he  entered 
Couture's  studio.  The  master  looked  over  his  work  from  the  life 
model  before  him  and  said,  "But  you  do  not  know  how  to  draw," 
and  introduced  him  to  values,  the  foundation  of  good  work.^ 
This,  and  the  confirming  his  instinct  that  the  artist  must  paint 
for  joy,  were  what  he  learned  from  Couture.  He  soon  found  that 
he  had  all  that  this  master  could  give  him. 

He  then  began  studying  the  work  of  the  great  Venetians  and 
Flemings,  but  one  day  saw  Millet's  "Sower,"  great,  but  unap- 
preciated, in  exhibition,  and  recognized  a  prophet  and  more  than 
a  prophet.  The  eager  youth  went  to  Barbizon.  There  he  found 
this  noble  peasant  painting  in  a  cellar  the  life  of  the  toiling  human 
beings  about  him.  On  the  easel  was  the  "  Sheep  Shearers."  Hunt 
reverenced  him  from  that  moment.  More  than  that,  this  joyous 
youth  made  Millet  his  friend.  He  soon  moved  to  Barbizon  and  was 
in  close  relation  with  him  for  two  years,  a  disciple,  not  an  imitator. 
Hunt  did  great  service  to  Millet  who  more  than  repaid  it  by  the  lift 
he  gave  to  him  by  his  high  tone,  his  breadth,  his  seriousness;  more 
than  all,  under  his  influence  Hunt's  boyish  generosity  became  hu- 
man sympathy.  Hunt  sold  the  "Sheep  Shearers"  for  Millet  to 
Mr.  Brimmer,  and  when  he  gave  him  the  money,  the  great  painter 
said  he  had  never  before  had  a  hundred  dollars  in  his  hand.  Thus, 
and  by  all  the  purchases  he  could  afford,  the  young  American  lifted 
the  master  out  of  debt  and,  more  than  that,  gave  vogue  to  his 
pictures. 

In  the  Fontainebleau  region  Hunt  met  the  group  of  painters  then 
making  fame  for  "the  Barbizon  School"  against  the  tide.  It  is  said 
that  Diaz  told  an  American  that  Hunt  was  the  most  brilliant  man 
he  had  ever  known.  Hunt  kept  and  rejoiced  in  a  beautiful  pair  of 
horses  and  drawn  swiftly  by  them  saw  the  region  around  Paris. 
Full  of  youthful  vitality,  and  enjoyment  of  nature  and  of  people, 
it  was  well  that  he  found  in  Millet  a  chastening  influence.   Millet 

^  In  his  admirable  Methode  et  Entretien  d' Atelier,  Couture  tells  the  story  of  his  opening 
the  eyes  of  a  confident  student  of  Dusseldorf  academic  training  to  values,  in  an  inter- 
esting way.   It  was  probably  Hunt. 


W^illiam  Morris  Hunt  4^7 

took  interest  in  his  pictures,  and,  struck  with  his  facility,  said, 
"Hunt,  you  ought  to  work!"  Yet  he  was  by  no  means  idle  and 
many  admirable  works  were  done  in  France,  like  the  "Prodigal 
Son,"  the  queenly  portrait  of  his  mother,  the  "Fortune-Teller," 
the  first  "Marguerite."  Napoleon  III  twice  tried  to  buy  the 
last-mentioned  work  in  vain,  as  it  was  promised  to  an  American. 
Long  retaining  his  interest  in  sculpture,  Hunt  kept  up  relations 
with  Barye,  believing  him  and  Millet  the  greatest  artists  of  their 
time. 

In  1855,  Mr.  Hunt,  returning  to  this  country,  was  married,  and 
made  his  pleasant  year-round  house  in  Newport  among  agreeable 
neighbours,  especially  Henry  James,  Sr.,  and  his  young  family. 
As  a  school-boy  visiting  in  that  wonderful  home,  I  had  the  privi- 
lege of  going  to  Hunt's  studio  where  William  and  La  Farge  were 
the  eleves.  While  I  was  there  Hunt  came  In  and  cordially  asked 
me,  boy  as  I  was,  to  his  studio  upstairs.  There  he  showed  me,  to 
my  great  delight,  the  first  studies  for  his  wonderful  "  Anahlta,"  or 
"Flight  of  Night,"  which  years  later  adorned  the  Capitol  at 
Albany.  He  also  showed  me  the  charming  lithographs  from  his 
paintings,  such  as  the  "Hurdy-Gurdy  Boy"  and  the  "Girl  at  the 
Fountain."  He  gave  me  copies  of  these  and  more.  Hunt,  In  his 
charming  way,  seemed  to  know  no  age  in  persons  who  were  Inter- 
ested in  beautiful  things.  This  was  about  1859.  That  same  year, 
at  the  request  of  the  Essex  Bar,  he  painted  the  remarkable  portrait 
of  Chief  Justice  Shaw,  now  in  the  Salem  Court-House. 

He  soon  established  himself  in  Roxbury.  Later,  he  had  a 
studio  in  Summer  Street  where  he  introduced  Bostonlans  to  the 
canvases  of  Millet,  Diaz,  Rousseau,  Gericault,  and  Corot,  new  to 
most  of  them;  yet  the  artist's  masculine  enthusiasm  and  hospi- 
table charm  were  the  principal  attraction. 

His  characteristic  generosity  appeared  in  his  calling  on  the  young 
men  returning  from  study  abroad,  and  he  almost  always  bought  a 
picture  to  help  bring  them  into  notice.  Seeing  some  of  the  work 
of  Vedder,  a  stranger  to  him,  he  wrote  to  urge  him  to  exhibit  in 
Boston,  and  many  of  the  pictures  were  at  once  sold. 

Stirred  by  an  attack  in  the  Advertiser  from  some  authority  at 
Harvard,  on  the  modern  French  painters,  Hunt  replied  in  a  with- 


468  'The  Saturday  Club 


ering  article:  "The  standard  of  art  education  is  indeed  carried  to 
a  dizzy  height  in  Harvard  University  when  such  men  as  Millet 
are  ranked  as  triflers.  .  .  .  Which  one  of  the  painters  named  above 
was  not  more  familiar  with  Veronese's  best  work  than  are  our 
children  with  the  Catechism?  They  were  not  only  familiar  with  all 
that  Is  evident,  but  devoted  students  of  the  qualities  in  Veronese, 
of  which  few  besides  themselves  know.  It  is  not  worth  while  to 
be  alarmed  about  the  influence  of  French  art.  It  would  hardly  be 
mortifying  If  a  Millet  or  a  Delacroix  should  be  developed  in  Bos- 
ton. It  is  not  our  fault  that  we  Inherit  Ignorance  In  art;  but  we 
are  not  obliged  to  advertise  it." 

The  first  year  of  the  war  brought  out  Hunt's  Inspiring  "Drum- 
mer Boy"  beating  "To  Arms!"  and  the  magnificent  "Bugle Call." 
The  power  and  beauty  of  his  portraits  began  to  be  appreciated  in 
Boston.   Sometimes  he  was  not  successful  because  he  required  that 
the  sitter  should  lend  himself  freely  to  the  work.  Thus,  a  portrait 
of  Dr.  Holmes  was  prosperously  begun,  but  the  Doctor  unhappily 
took  out  his  watch,  having  an  engagement  in  Cambridge,  and 
asked,  "How  long  must  I  sit.?"    Hunt,  somewhat  disturbed,  yet 
set  to  work,  and  all  was  going  well  when  the  watch  and  the  uneasy 
expression  reappeared.  These  conditions  soon  wrecked  the  adven- 
ture.   Emerson  disliked  even  to  sit  for  a  photograph;  said  he 
"was  not  a  subject  for  art";  but  Mrs.  John  M.  Forbes  wished 
much  that  Hunt  should  paint  him!    He  was  eager  to  do  It,  and 
began  In  good  hope.   But,  though  Emerson  liked  him,  the  sittings 
dismayed  him,  and  when,  on  leaving,  he  asked,  "Must  I  come 
again.?"  Hunt  told  him  No,  it  was  of  no  use.   Hunt  used  to  say, 
"No  persuaded  sitters  for  me:  I  never  could  paint  a  cat  if  the  cat 
had  any  scruples,  religious,  superstitious,  or  otherwise  about  sit- 
ting."  Emerson's  unfinished  portrait  perished  in  the  Boston  Fire. 
At  the  desire  of  a  committee  appointed  to  have  a  portrait  of 
Sumner  painted,  as  a  gift  to  Carl   Schurz,  Hunt  somewhat  un- 
willingly consented  to  undertake  it,  for  he  found  himself  repelled 
by  the  Senator's  personality.    Probably  he  had  only  met  him  at 
the  Club,  where  Sumner's  magisterial  bearing,  lack  of  flexibility 
and  of  humour  were  sometimes  annoying.  The  committee  did  not 
like  the  portrait.   Hunt  painted  what  he  found  in  Sumner's  face 


JVilliam  Morris  Hunt  4^9 

and  bearing,  his  confident  and  almost  scornfully  militant  side. 
The  picture  won  much  praise  in  England. 

Hunt's  brilliant  yet  human  presence,  his  original  force  and 
great  generosity  leavened  the  inert  lump  of  art  opinion  in  Boston. 
He  awakened  the  Interest  and  desire  of  the  young  people,  and  con- 
sented to  take  charge  of  a  class  of  forty  young  women.  His  in- 
struction to  his  pupils  was  original,  exciting;  if  necessary,  wisely 
contradictory,  to  suit  the  individual  temperament.  More  than  all, 
he  Inspired  them  with  love  of  art  and  made  it  seem  possible  to 
them.  He  was  not  one  of  those  Instructors  who  simply  pass  by  the 
pupil  and,  when  asked  for  a  criticism,  coldly  say,  "I  see  nothing 
there  to  criticise,"  utterly  discouraging.  Hunt  could  not  but  in- 
spire by  his  wit  and  his  faith.  Fortunately  one  of  his  pupils,  as  he 
passed  from  easel  to  easel,  jotted  down  his  quick  criticisms  and 
remarks  on  the  corner  of  her  drawing-paper.  Later,  when  Hunt 
became  more  busy,  he  deputed  the  business  management  of  the 
class  to  this  young  lady.  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  the  English 
portrait  painter.  Impressed  by  Hunt's  Chief  Justice  Shaw,  visited 
the  class.  After  Hunt  had  taken  leave,  this  lady,  Miss  Helen 
Knowlton,  showed  him  her  notes  of  the  master's  varied  Instruction. 
Mr.  Dickinson  was  so  struck  with  their  value  that  he  urged  the 
printing  of  these  Talks  on  Art,  to  which  Hunt  at  last  consented 
after  pruning  them  severely.^ 

Hunt's  disappointing  lack  of  interest  In  the  School  of  Drawing 
and  Painting  in  the  new  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  was  due  to  disbe- 
lief in  the  South  Kensington  ideas  that  at  first  prevailed.  His  own 
Diisseldorf  experience,  also  the  influence  of  Couture  —  who,  like 
himself,  had  been  paralyzed  by  academic  work  —  made  him 
dread  the  usual  routine  of  school  Instruction,  endless  crayon 
stump  work  from  cast  and  model.  He  wished  rather  for  the 
Museum  School  a  great  working  atelier  where  many  live  painters 
should  give  each  one  day  a  week.  Thus  he  hoped  for  freshness  and 
individuality  and  the  personal  magnetism  of  one  or  another  to 
stir  the  individual  pupil.    When  asked  what  should  be  the  limit 

^  We  owe  also  to  Miss  Helen  Knowlton  her  admirable  Art  Life  of  William  Morris  Huntf 
from  which  the  writer  has  gratefully  quoted  much,  with  the  consent  of  Messrs.  LittJe, 
Brown  and  Company. 


47 o  ^he  Saturday  Club 

of  age  for  study  In  the  Art  Museum,  he  replied:  "From  the  age 
when  Beethoven  began  to  play  the  piano  —  four  years  —  to  the 
age  when  Titian  painted  one  of  his  greatest  pictures  —  ninety 
years." 

One  of  Hunt's  sayings  was,  "Queer  old  thing  painting  is;  but 
we  would  rather  die  doing  it  than  live  doing  anything  else."  He 
defined  painting  as,  "Having  something  to  say,  and  not  saying  it 
in  words." 

Catholic  In  his  receptivity,  he  recognized  the  quality  In  Japa- 
nese art.  Mr.  Norton  sitting  beside  Hunt  at  a  Club  dinner,  told 
him  of  a  beautiful  little  Japanese  vase  or  cup  which  he  had  just 
come  by,  and  said,  "Would  you  like  to  see  it.^*"  taking  it  from  his 
pocket  and  handing  it  to  him.  Hunt  exclaimed,  "Like  to  see  it.^* 
By  God,  it's  one  of  those  damned  ultimate  things!" 

The  Great  Fire  in  Boston  in  1872  swept  Summer  Street  and 
with  it  Hunt's  studio  and  all  its  contents,  many  notable  portraits 
in  all  stages  of  work,  and  also  his  own  valuable  collection  of  the 
paintings  of  the  French  masters  whom  he  held  in  honour. 

After  this  time  Hunt  turned  more  to  landscape  painting  than  he 
had  hitherto.  As  he  advanced  In  It,  his  pleasure  seems  to  speak 
from  his  canvas.  Mr.  Forbes  valued  Hunt  highly  and  he  took 
him  with  him  as  his  guest,  In  1874,  to  Florida,  where  he  went  for 
rest  when  overworked  —  rest,  however,  of  an  active-out-of-door 
kind;  first  for  shooting  and  fishing  along  the  coast,  then  to  his 
family  cottage  at  Magnolia  Springs.  Here  Hunt  delighted  in  the 
wide  gleaming  St.  John's  River,  seen  through  the  steely  glitter 
of  the  great  magnoHas,  and  to  sketch,  on  the  strange  lonely  creeks, 
their  live-oaks  and  cypresses  hung  by  the  half-mourning  moss 
swaying  slowly  in  the  breeze.  In  the  years  Immediately  following 
he  painted  the  upper  Charles,  then  the  Artichoke  River  at  Cur- 
zon's  Mills,  with  constantly  increasing  light  and  colour.  In  some 
of  these  pictures  one  sees  the  eff'ect  of  the  teacupful  of  opals  which 
he  bought  in  Mexico  as  a  lift. 

In  the  spring  of  1878,  Hunt  went  to  Niagara  for  rest,  but,  stirred 
by  the  wild  rush  of  the  rapids,  the  wonderful  colour  and  the  maj- 
esty of  the  Falls,  sent  for  paint  and  canvas  and  worked  with  great 
results.    I  cannot,  while  telling  of  the  Niagara  vacations,  omit  a 


JVilUam  Morris  Hunt  47  ^ 

story  of  Miss  Knowlton's  which  shows  Hunt's  tenderness.  Re- 
turning to  their  hotel,  his  sister  told  him  that,  while  buying  some 
bead-work  in  a  small  shop,  she  had  been  distressed  by  hearing  a 
sick  child  cry  in  the  back  room.  She  was  sure  that  it  must  be 
suffering  greatly.    Its  screams  still  pierced  her  ears. 

"I  believe,"  said  her  brother,  "that  I  can  cure  that  child;  and 
what  is  more,  I  am  going  to  do  it."  He  arose  from  his  chair,  called 
for  his  overshoes;  it  was  half-past  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening, 
dark  and  raining;  but  he  would  go.  He  learned  where  the  shop 
was,  and  set  forth  hastily.  At  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  he  re- 
turned, wet,  but  very  happy. 

"How's  your  child .f"'  his  sister  asked. 

"She's  all  right.  I  left  her  sleeping.  I  tell  you,  that  kind  of 
work  pays."  i 

But  midsummer  of  that  year  brought  to  Hunt  a  call,  unexpected, 
unhoped-for,  to  do  a  great  public  work,  in  the  toil  and  the  joy  of 
which  his  life  culminated.  The  work  was  noble  and  worthy;  it 
stirred  and  inspired  him  —  happily  not  foreseeing  the  sad  end. 
He  was  commissioned  to  adorn  with  great  mural  paintings  the 
Assembly  Hall  of  the  New  Capitol  at  Albany. 

On  a  scaffold  forty  feet  above  the  floor.  Hunt  painted,  directly 
on  stone,  the  many  colossal  figures  of  his  two  symbolic  designs, 
"The  Discoverer"  and  "The  Flight  of  Night."  With  but  one 
assistant  he  did  this  great  work  in  two  months. 

Hunt  felt  freedom  and  advance  in  this  new  work.  "Think  of  it, 
you  never  hear  of  Boston  a  hundred  miles  away!  I  am  out  of  the 
world,  and  I  want  to  stay  out."  But  with  this  enthusiasm  in  a 
great  work  went  pleasure  in,  and  reverence  for,  the  workmen;  he 
painting,  they  building,  six  hundred  men  together,  each  respect- 
ing and  enjoying  the  other's  work.  They  said  that  while  they  were 
proud  to  be  working  on  such  a  building,  they  were  prouder  still 
to  see  his  work  going  on.  "I  tell  you,"  said  Hunt,  "that  I  never 
felt  so  big  in  my  life  as  I  did  when  they  asked  me  if  they  could  come 
again  and  see  my  picture."  He  planned,  in  other  paintings  there 
(vetoed  later  by  the  Governor),  to  introduce  their  figures. 

Before  beginning  the  work,  Hunt  had  faithfully  tried,  as  far  as 
the  time  allowed,  in  the  summer,  the  effects  of  moisture  and  of 


472  "The  Saturday  Club 

cold  on  paint  on  stone,  and  believed  it  would  last.  But  unhappily 
politics  had  crept  into  the  contracting,  a  leaking  roof  resulted, 
and  within  ten  years  the  paintings  were  utterly  ruined.  But  the 
artist  was  spared  this  blow.  Inevitable  reaction  had  followed  the 
supreme  mental  and  physical  expenditure;  personal  sorrows  were 
added.  In  the  summer  of  1879,  weak  and  depressed,  he  sought 
refreshment  with  friends  at  Appledore  Island.  There,  whether  by 
accident  or  sudden  impulse,  he  was  drowned  in  an  inland  pool  in 
the  early  autumn. 

Mr.  Hunt  was  a  most  striking  personality,  tall  and  spare,  with 
brilliant  eyes  and  an  aquiline  nose;  nearly  bald,  but  with  a  fore- 
lock like  Time  in  the  Primer,  a  moustache  and  long  gray  beard. 
He  was  quick  and  alert,  most  cheery  and  responsive;  a  wonder- 
ful raconteur  and  even  mimic,  everything  became  dramatic  in 
his  handling. 

A  lady,  a  guest  with  him  at  the  enchanting  Isle  of  Naushon, 
riding  in  a  party  with  Mr.  Forbes  on  the  "Desert,"  describes 
Hunt's  sudden  appearance  on  a  fine  Kentucky  horse,  riding  up 
gallantly,  his  beard  blown  backward  on  both  shoulders,  the  sun- 
set gleaming  like  garnet  in  his  eyes,  and  the  Mephistophelean  effect 
heightened  by  a  turkey  feather  springing  from  each  side  of  his  soft 
hat.  Yet  in  his  studio  in  serious  mood,  with  his  round  cap  and 
velvet  coat,  he  was  singularly  suggestive  of  Titian's  portrait  of 
himself.  In  Hunt's  early  days  an  elderly  stranger  in  France  came 
up  and  said,  "  Sir,  you  so  much  resemble  a  great  Frenchman  whom 
I  knew  that  it  seems  as  if  he  must  have  returned  to  earth."  "That 
is  indeed  strange,"  was  the  reply;  "to  whom  do  you  refer .^"  "To 
G^ricault." 

In  sympathy  and  respect  Hunt  knew  no  social  class.  He  hon- 
oured the  labourer;  helped,  in  the  city  street,  on  the  instant,  the 
poor  woman  with  her  ash-barrel,  or,  in  a  humble  house,  a  stranger 
mother  to  relieve  the  pain  of  her  sick  child. 

From  Hunt's  work  beauty  in  its  full  sense  speaks,  contrasted 
with  that  of  many  men  eminent  for  technique  or  "strength."  In 
his  is  nothing  coarse,  sensational,  ignoble,  ugly.  He  heeded  the 
words  of  his  old  master.  Couture,  "Avant  tout,fuyez  le  laid!''^  In 
his  work  is  always  feeling  and  humanity.    Mrs.  Whitman,  per- 


JVilliam  Morris  Hunt  473 

haps  his  best  pupil,  said,  "Even  what  is  called  the  moral  passion 
has  a  place  in  his  art." 

After  his  death  these  maxims  of  Hunt  were  found  in  his  pocket- 
book:  "To  be  strong,  get  self-control;  to  be  strong,  live  for  others; 
no  one  ever  injures  us,  we  injure  ourselves." 

Once,  when  asked  to  write  in  a  painter's  album,  this  was  his 
contribution :  — 

"Go  East,  young  man!  Meeting,  greet  the  sun,  our  master- 
painter  .  .  .  tell  him  that  the  light  which  he  gives  the  full-grown 
past  is  far  too  strong  for  us.  Like  young  cats,  we  are  blinded  by 
the  light,  and  still  we  pray  for  light.  .  .  . 

"Tell  him  his  light  is  strong,  and  warm,  and  healthful;  still 
we  are  weak,  and  cold,  and  sorry.  Would  he  just  deal  out  such 
pap  as  that  with  which  he  fed  the  Venetians  and  Greeks.  Or  even 
the  darkness  in  which  the  Egyptians  and  the  Children  of  the 
Sun  wrought  such  wonders.  Then  we  might  do  better.  Our  souls, 
not  our  eyes,  require  the  light.  Strengthen  the  perceptions,  not 
the  sight." 

E.  W.  E. 


Chapter  XVII 
1870 

Say,  what  is  honour?  —  *T  is  the  finest  sense 
Of  justice  that  the  human  mind  can  frame. 
Intent  each  lurking  frailty  to  disclaim. 
And  guard  the  way  of  life  from  all  offence 
Suffered  or  done. 

Wordsworth 

In  these  brave  ranks  I  only  see  the  gaps. 
Thinking  of  dear  ones  whom  the  dumb  turf  wraps. 
Dark  to  the  triumph  which  they  died  to  gain. 

Say  not  so! 
'Tis  not  the  grapes  of  Canaan  that  repay. 
But  the  high  faith  that  failed  not  by  the  way. 

Blow,  trumpets,  all  your  exultations  blow! 
For  never  shall  their  aureoled  presence  lack: 
I  see  them  muster  in  a  gleaming  row. 
With  ever-youthful  brows  that  nobler  show; 
We  find  in  our  dull  road  their  shining  track. 

Beautiful  evermore,  and  with  the  rays 

Of  morn  on  their  white  shields  of  Expectation ! 

Lowell,  Commemoration  Ode 

THREE  books  had  been  launched  on  such  voyage  of  life 
as  each  might  make  just  as  the  New  Year  was  coming  in ;  three 
volumes  of  Sumner's  addresses,  or  speeches  in  Congress,  Lowell's 
Among  my  Books  (first  series),  and  Emerson's  Society  and  Solitude. 
Longfellow  acknowledging  Sumner's  gift  wrote:  "Each  title  a 
round  in  the  ladder  by  which  you  mounted  and  reaching  from 
1845  to  1855.  What  a  noble  decade,  and  what  a  noble  record!  I 
say  'the  rounds  of  a  ladder';  let  me  rather  say  steps  hewn  in  the 
rock,  one  after  the  other,  as  you  toiled  upward." 

In  February,  Lowell  went  to  Washington  with  his  wife  to  visit 
Judge  and  Mrs.  Hoar.  After  his  return  the  Judge  wrote:  "Your 
coming  did  me  a  great  deal  of  good,  and  our  friend  Ulysses  (or 


i870 


47S 


'Ulyss,'  as  Mrs.  G.  calls  him  sometimes)  had  a  revelation,  the 
day  after  you  left.  He  went  to  an  evening  party  where,  among 
the  entertainments  provided,  was  reading  by  an  adept  in  that  act. 
The  reader  had,  as  one  of  his  selections,  one  of  the  later  '  Biglow 
Papers';  and,  as  I  understand,  read  it  very  well.  The  President 
spoke  to  me  about  it  the  next  day  —  said  that  he  had  never  read 
or  heard  one  of  them  before,  but  that  it  was  the  most  perfect  state- 
ment of  the  whole  doctrine  of  reconstruction  that  he  had  ever  met 
with.  He  seemed  much  impressed,  and  the  next  night .  .  .  pro- 
cured the  reader  to  attend  at  the  State  dinner  at  the  White  House 
and  read  it  there." 

Fechter  had  come  to  America  during  this  winter  with  his  novel 
and  very  Teutonic  rendering  of  Hamlet,  well  matched  by  his  large 
and  rather  heavy  appearance  and  blond  complexion  and  hair. 
The  actor  and  the  man  were  well  received  in  Boston,  also  in  Cam- 
bridge. Longfellow  dined  with  him  at  Lowell's  and  on  that  evening 
sent  the  following  Invitation  across  the  way  to  Lowell :  — 

"N'oubliez  vous  demain 
A  une  heure  et  demie, 

Je  vous  en  prie; 
Huitres  et  vin  du  Rhin, 
Salade  de  homard, 
Volnay  et  venaison, 

Don,  Don, 
N'arrivez  vous  trop  tard!" 

So  the  next  day  Fechter  lunched  at  Longfellow's  with  Lowell  and 
Henry  James,  Sr. 

Of  the  February  meeting,  Mr.  Emerson  noted:  "At  the  Club 
yesterday,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Cabot,  Brimmer,  Appleton,  Hunt, 
James,  Forbes,  Fields.  Erastus  Bigelow  ^  was  a  guest."  He  goes 
on  to  say:  "How  dangerous  Is  criticism.  My  brilliant  friend  can- 
not see  any  healthy  power  in  Thoreau's  thoughts.  At  first  I  sus- 
pect, of  course,  that  he  oversees  me,  who  admire  Thoreau's  power. 
But  when  I  meet  again  the  fine  perceptions  in  Thoreau's  papers, 
I  see  that  there  Is  a  defect  In  his  critic  that  he  should  undervalue 
them." 

There  can  be  little  question  that  Lowell  was  the  brilliant  friend. 

^  The  inventor  and  improver  of  various  looms,  and  writer  on  the  Tariff. 


47^  T^he  Saturday  Club 

He  and  Thoreau  were  hopelessly  antipodal,  though  both  earnest 
and  manly.  It  was  a  case  of  contrast  of  gentleman  and  man  (both 
words  used  in  the  more  common,  yet  favourable  sense),  society 
and  solitude,  usage  and  independence,  suburbs  and  full  country. 
The  criticisms  of  Thoreau  found  often  in  Emerson's  journal,  and 
even  in  his  address  at  his  funeral,  were  written  before  he  had  read 
anything  of  Thoreau  but  the  earlier  books,  in  which  his  attitude 
was  often  critical  of  the  private  and  public  life  of  the  day,  and 
contentious.  When,  after  his  friend's  death,  his  journals  were  put 
into  Mr.  Emerson's  hands  with  their  rare  observations  and  spirit- 
ual illuminations  from  them,  he  no  longer  lamented  the  brave 
and  true  life  as  wasted. 

Dr.  Holmes,  writing  to  Motley,  in  April,  of  the  "sesthetic 
endemic"  then  raging  in  Boston  of  which  Fechter  was  the  ma- 
crobe,  says:  "Another  sensation  ...  is  our  new  Harvard  College 
President.  King  Log  has  made  room  for  King  Stork.  Mr.  Eliot 
makes  the  Corporation  meet  twice  a  month.  .  .  .  He  shows  an 
extraordinary  knowledge  of  all  that  relates  to  every  department 
of  the  University,  and  presides  with  an  aplomb,  a  quiet,  imperturb- 
able, serious  good-humour  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  admire.  .  .  ." 
The  Doctor  then  expresses  some  sympathy  with  the  quoting  by 
some  of  the  Fellows  of  "that  valuable  precept, /^j^tna  lente,^^  but 
speaks  of  his  being  "amused,  because  I  do  not  really  care  much 
about  most  of  the  changes  which  he  proposes. 

"'How  is  it.'*  I  should  like  to  ask,'  said  one  of  our  number,  the 
other  evening,  'that  this  Faculty  [of  Medicine]  has  gone  on  for 
eighty  years  managing  its  own  affairs,  and  doing  it  well  .  .  .  and 
now  within  three  or  four  months  it  is  proposed  to  change  all  our 
modes  of  carrying  on  the  school  —  it  seems  very  extraordinary, 
and  I  should  like  to  know  how  it  happens.' 

"'I  can  answer  Dr. 's  question  very  easily,'  said  the  bland, 

grave  young  man,  '  there  is  a  new  President.'  The  tranquil  assur- 
ance of  this  answer  had  an  effect  such  as  I  hardly  ever  knew  pro- 
duced by  the  most  eloquent  sentences  I  ever  heard.  ...  I  have 
great  hopes  from  his  energy  and  devotion  to  his  business,  which  he 
studies  as  I  suppose  no  President  ever  did  before.  .  .  . "  ^ 

^  Up  to  this  time,  the  requirements  for  taking  the  Harvard  Medical  degree  were  that 


i870 


477 


The  Doctor  continues :  — 

"  I  went  to  the  Club  last  Saturday,  and  met  some  of  the  friends 
you  always  like  to  hear  of.  I  sat  by  Emerson,  who  always  charms 
me  with  his  delicious  voice,  his  fine  sense  and  wit  and  the  delicate 
way  he  steps  about  among  the  words  of  his  vocabulary  —  if  you 
have  ever  seen  a  cat  picking  her  footsteps  in  wet  weather,  you 
have  seen  the  picture  of  Emerson's  exquisite  intelligence,  feeling 
for  his  phrase  or  epithet  .  .  .  and  at  last  seizing  his  noun  or  adjec- 
tive —  the  best,  the  only  one  which  would  serve  the  need  of  his 
thought. 

"Longfellow  was  there.  .  .  .  He  feels  the  tameness  and  want  of 
interest  in  the  life  he  is  leading  after  the  excitement  of  his  Euro- 
pean experience,  and  makes  no  secret  of  it.  .  .  .  He  is  restless  now 
for  want  of  a  task.  I  hope  he  will  find  some  pleasant  literary  labour 
for  his  later  years  —  for  his  graceful  and  lovely  nature  can  hardly 
find  expression  in  any  form  without  giving  pleasure  to  others,  and 
for  him  to  be  idle  is,  I  fear,  to  be  the  prey  of  sad  memories. 

"  Agassiz,  you  know,  has  been  in  a  condition  to  cause  very  grave 
fears.    I  am  happy  to  say  that  he  is  much  improved  of  late." 

Ever  since  the  late  autumn  the  vigorous,  hearty,  wholesome 
Agassiz  had  been  suffering  from  some  obscure  ailment  which, 
though  at  times  improving,  recurred  all  through  the  year,  sometimes 
in  a  threatening  manner  interfering  with  his  work  and  alarming 
friends.  He  was  able  to  go  to  the  White  Mountains  in  later 
summer  and  seemed  better  there. 

Among  the  new  departures  at  Harvard  was  a  scheme,  soon 
abandoned,  of  having  lectures  to  advanced  students  given  there 
by  persons  not  members  of  the  Faculties.  Mr.  Emerson  was  sur- 
prised and  pleased  by  an  invitation  to  give  a  course  on  Philosophy. 
As  Mr.  Cabot  says  In  his  Memoir:  "No  one  would  expect  from 
Emerson  a  system.  .  .  .  But  he  had  long  cherished  the  thought  of 
a  more  fruitful  method  for  the  study  of  the  mind,  founded  on  the 

the  student  should  have  attended  two  full  courses  of  lectures  in  the  Medical  School,  and 
should  have  studied  three  years  (one  of  these  was  often  under  the  guidance  and  teaching 
of  some  approved  doctor),  and  should  have  dissected  each  portion  of  the  human  body 
twice,  and  finally  passed  oral  examinations  on  the  majority  of  the  nine  subjects  required 
reasonably  well.  Microscopy  (hence  histology)  was  in  its  infancy.  Among  the  eager  abet- 
tors of  the  reform  may  be  mentioned  Drs.  Ellis,  White,  Cheever,  Fitz,  Wood,  and  H.  P. 
Bowditch. 


47  8  ^^  Saturday  Club 


parallelism  of  the  mental  laws  with  the  laws  of  external  nature, 
and  proceeding  by  simple  observation  of  the  metaphysical  facts 
and  their  analogy  with  the  physical,  in  place  of  the  method  of 
introspection  and  analysis."  For  thirty  years  Mr.  Emerson  had 
been  making  such  observations  and  had  introduced  them  in  his 
lectures.  Now  he  hoped  to  gather  these  and  complete  his  state- 
ment of  the  Natural  History  of  Intellect.  He  modestly  stated  his 
purpose  thus:  "I  might  suggest  that  he  who  contents  himself  with 
dotting  only  a  fragmentary  curve,  recording  only  what  facts  he  has 
observed,  without  attempting  to  arrange  them  within  one  outline, 
follows  a  system  also,  a  system  as  grand  as  any  other,  though  he 
does  not  interfere  with  its  vast  curves  by  prematurely  forcing  them 
into  a  circle  or  ellipse,  but  only  draws  that  arc  which  he  clearly 
sees,  and  waits  for  new  opportunity,  well  assured  that  these  ob- 
served arcs  consist  with  each  other.  .  .  .  My  belief  in  a  course  on 
Philosophy  is  that  the  student  shall  learn  to  appreciate  the  mir- 
acle of  mind;  shall  see  in  it  the  source  of  all  traditions,  and  shall 
see  each  of  them  as  better  or  worse  statement  of  its  revelations." 
Mr.  Emerson  worked  with  great  diligence  at  the  preparation  of 
these  lectures,  but  arrangement  of  his  Sibylline  leaves  was,  through 
life,  his  difficulty.  It  must  be  remembered  that  it  was  now  five 
years  at  least  since  he  had  written  "Terminus."  There  was  an 
audience  of  thirty  or  more  students  and  some  outsiders;  and  the 
lectures  were  well  received,  but  he  was  not  quite  happy  about  it. 
He  was  asked  to  give  another  course  the  following  year. 

During  the  session  of  Congress  the  pressure  of  dissatisfied  poli- 
ticians increased  until  the  President  could  withstand  it  no  longer. 
One  day  in  June,  Judge  Hoar  who  had,  months  before,  told  Presi- 
dent Grant  that  he  was  ready  to  withdraw  from  the  Cabinet  at 
any  time  that  it  was  deemed  desirable  for  the  public  service  that 
he  should  do  so,  but  had  received  no  hint  that  such  a  course  was 
desired,  received  a  curt  letter  from  the  President  asking  him  to 
resign  his  office  of  Attorney-General.  The  Judge  instantly  com- 
plied, but  the  manner  of  the  President's  action,  sudden  and  with- 
out explanation,  surprised  and  pained  him.  They  had  seemed  to 
be  in  most  friendly  relation.  Of  course  this  removal  of  a  man  so 
just,  wise,  and  brave  from  the  counsellors  of  the  President,  and 


i8jo 


479 


the  manner  of  it,  caused  surprise  and  indignation  in  Massachu- 
setts.^ 

But  the  Presidential  axe  was  soon  to  fall  on  the  neck  of  another 
of  our  brilliant  and  honoured  members.  Motley,  in  England,  re- 
spected and  valued,  and,  after  the  matters  criticised  by  Secretary 
Fish  in  the  previous  year  had  been  explained  and  that  slight  flurry 
had  apparently  blown  over,  supposing  that  he  was  in  satisfactory 
relations  with  his  Country,  received  from  that  official,  in  July, 
a  letter  requesting  him  to  resign.  Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  memoir  of 
this  perhaps  his  nearest  friend,  devotes  a  long  chapter  to  his  de- 
fence. Grant  had  given  Motley  this  mission  at  Sumner's  request. 
Later,  when  the  President  was  pressing  the  San  Domingo  Treaty 
which  he  had  much  at  heart,  Sumner  vigorously  opposed  the  treaty, 
which  was  defeated  in  the  Senate  on  the  last  day  of  June.  The 
next  day  Motley's  resignation  was  requested.  Grant  was  known 
to  have  been  very  angry  with  Sumner,  and  apparently  considered 
that  Motley  was  guiding  his  course  in  England  under  Sumner's 
advice,  in  a  way  that  would  irritate  England  when  the  Alabama 
claims,  still  pending,  were  considered.  ji  I 

Rightly  or  wrongly,  the  belief  of  Motley's  friends  was,  as  Dr. 
Holmes  puts  it,  "that  the  shaft  which  struck  to  the  heart  of 
the  sensitive  envoy  glanced  from  the  ces  triplex  of  the  obdurate 
Senator." 

The  Club  addressed  President  Grant  on  Motley's  behalf,  as  here 
related  by  Governor  Cox,  in  the  article  already  referred  to :  — 

"Another  incident  of  my  visit  must  be  mentioned.  General 
Sherman  also  was  in  Boston  at  the  time,  and  I  was  invited  with 
him  to  dinner  by  the  Saturday  Club,  of  which  Judge  Hoar  was 
a  member.  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and  Holmes  were  all 
there,  and  I  need  not  say  it  was  an  occasion  to  remember.  It  only 
concerns  my  present  story,  however,  to  tell  what  occurred  just 
before  we  parted.  Mr.  Longfellow  was  presiding,  and  unexpect- 
edly I  found  that  he  was  speaking  to  me  In  the  name  of  the  Club. 
He  said  that  they  had  been  much  disturbed  by  rumours  then  cur- 

^  The  story  of  this  occurrence  is  told  by  Governor  Jacob  Dolson  Cos  in  a  very  inter- 
esting paper  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  August,  1895,  entitled,  "How  Judge  Hoar  ceased 
to  be  Attorney-General." 


4^0  The  Saturday  Club 

rent  that  Mr.  Motley  was  to  be  recalled  from  England  on  account 
of  Senator  Sumner's  opposition  to  the  San  Domingo  Treaty. 
They  would  be  very  far  from  seeking  to  influence  any  action  of 
the  President  which  was  based  on  Mr.  Motley's  conduct  in  his 
diplomatic  duties,  of  which  they  knew  little,  and  could  not  judge; 
but  they  thought  the  President  ought  to  know  that  if  the  rumour 
referred  to  was  well  founded,  he  would,  in  their  opinion,  offend  all 
the  educated  men  of  New  England.  It  could  not  be  right  to  make 
a  disagreement  with  Mr.  Sumner  prejudice  Mr.  Motley  by  reason 
of  the  friendship  between  the  two.  I  could  only  answer  that  no 
body  of  men  had  better  right  to  speak  for  American  men  of  letters, 
and  that  I  would  faithfully  convey  their  message." 

Motley,  however,  would  not  resign,  and  was  recalled.  This 
action  on  the  part  of  our  Government  was  received  in  England 
with  surprise  and  regret.  A  leading  London  journal  declared  that 
*'  the  vacancy  he  leaves  cannot  possibly  be  filled  by  a  Minister  more 
sensitive  to  the  interests  of  his  Country  and  more  capable  of  unit- 
ing the  most  vigorous  performance  of  his  public  duties  with  the 
high-bred  courtesy  and  conciliatory  tact  and  temper  that  make 
these  duties  easy  and  successful." 

On  the  Fourth  of  July  culminated  a  plan  of  Longfellow's  which 
for  some  time  had  been  in  his  mind,  beneficent  to  the  University 
and  continuously  to  the  dwellers  in  Cambridge  and  to  the  multi- 
tudes who  visit  it.  On  this  day  Longfellow  writes,  "Execute  the 
deed  of  the  Brighton  Meadows  for  the  College."  Soon  after,  he 
wrote  to  Norton,  "A  few  of  us  have  just  presented  seventy  acres 
of  the  .  .  .  meadows  with  your  namesake  flowing  through  it  and 
making  its  favourite  flourish  of  the  letter  S."  From  Longfellow's 
door  this  beautiful  expanse  may  be  seen  to-day. 

Longfellow,  urging  Sumner  to  visit  him,  cries  out  in  his  joy 
in  his  refuge  from  July  heats  and  curious  visitors:  "I  never  knew 
Nahant  in  finer  flavour  than  this  year.  It  is  a  delight  to  look  at 
the  sea;  and,  as  for  the  air,  none  is  so  good  for  me.  Thalattal 
Thalattal  And  then  to  think  of  the  daily  chowder!  Why,  no 
bouillabaisse  of  Aries  or  Marseilles  can  compare  with  it." 

^Their  amusing  and  affectionate  Uncle  Tom  (Appleton)  who 


had  named  his  boat,  for  the  eldest  of  his  nieces,  the  "Alice," 
rejoiced  in  the  company  of  the  young  people  on  his  short 
cruises. 

Lowell,  who,  in  the  spring,  had  been  reading  lectures  at  Balti- 
more and  also  at  Cornell  University,  found  much  pleasure  in  the 
summer  in  the  company  of  Thomas  Hughes,  who  had  made  a 
welcome  for  himself,  some  years  before  his  coming,  by  his  Tom 
Brown  at  Rugby,  and,  later,  At  Oxford,  and,  by  showing  himself 
a  good  and  understanding  friend  of  the  North  in  the  war.  He  had 
even  had  the  temerity  to  quote  in  Parliament  Hosea  Biglow's 
question :  — 

"Who  made  the  law  that  hurts,  John, 
Heads  I  win,  ditto  tails? 
J.  B.  was  on  his  shirts,  John, 
Onless  my  mem'ry  fails." 

Now  in  Boston  Hughes  was  explaining  John  to  Jonathan. 

The  following  quotation  from  a  letter  of  Lowell  to  his  friend 
Robert  Carter,  who  wished  to  get  him  to  contribute  to  his  maga- 
zine, gives  us  a  glimpse  into  the  mind  of  this  writer,  scholar,  and 
future  statesman.  Lowell  has  to  decline,  saying:  "I  have  not  time. 
I  have  not  that  happy  gift  of  inspired  knowledge  so  common  in  this 
country,  and  work  more  and  more  slowly  toward  conclusions  as 
I  get  older.  I  give,  on  an  average,  twelve  hours  a  day  to  study 
(after  my  own  fashion),  but  I  find  real  knowledge  slow  of  ac- 
cumulation. Moreover,  I  am  too  busy  in  the  college  for  a  year 
or  two  yet.  It  is  not  the  career  I  should  have  chosen  and  I 
half  think  I  was  made  for  better  things  —  but  I  must  make  the 
best  of  it." 

It  is  interesting  to  note  here  that  thus  early  in  the  reign  of 
President  Eliot,  questioner  of  time-honoured  usage,  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  University  decided  that  it  should  no  longer  discredit 
itself  by  bestowing  the  honorary  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  on  any 
alumnus  who  should,  five  years  after  graduation,  bring  proof,  by 
his  survival  to  that  period,  of  his  vitality,  and,  by  a  gift  of  five 
dollars  to  the  Treasury,  of  his  reasonable  prosperity.  These  two 
achievements  passed  as  demonstration  of  his  fitness. 


4^2  T'he  Saturday  Club 

On  the  6th  of  October,  the  corner-stone  was  laid  of  the  hall 
built  in  honouring  memory  of  Harvard's  sons  who  had  given  their 
lives  to  save  their  Country. 

The  following  notes  of  that  occasion  are  taken  from  Mr. 
Emerson's  journal:  — 

"All  was  well  and  wisely  done.  The  storm  ceased  for  us;  the 
company  was  large  —  the  best  men  and  women  there  —  or  all  but 
a  few;  the  arrangements  simple  and  excellent  and  every  speaker 
successful.  Henry  Lee,  with  his  uniform  sense  and  courage,  the 
Manager;  the  Chaplain,  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  offered  a  prayer  in 
which  not  a  word  was  superfluous  and  every  right  thing  was  said. 
Henry  Rogers,  William  Gray,  Dr.  Palfrey,  made  each  his  proper 
report.  Luther's  Hymn  in  Dr.  Hedge's  translation  was  sung  by  a 
great  choir,  the  corner-stone  was  laid,  and  then  Rockwood  Hoar 
read  a  discourse  of  perfect  sense,  taste,  and  feeling  —  full  of  virtue 
and  of  tenderness.  After  this,  an  original  song  by  Wendell  Holmes 
was  given  by  the  choir.  Every  part  in  all  these  performances  was 
in  such  true  feeling  that  people  praised  them  with  broken  voices, 
and  we  all  proudly  wept.  Our  Harvard  soldiers  of  the  war  were 
in  their  uniforms  and  heard  their  own  praises,  and  the  tender 
allusions  to  their  dead  comrades.  General  Meade  was  present, 
and  '  adopted  by  the  College,'  as  Judge  Hoar  said,  and  Governor 
Claflin  sat  by  President  Eliot.  Our  English  guests,  Hughes,  Raw- 
lins, Dicey,  and  Bryce,  sat  and  listened." 

Meantime,  Norton,  with  no  foreknowledge  of  the  invaluable 
service  he  was  to  be  called  on  to  give  to  the  University  for  years 
after  his  return,was  diligently  fitting  himself  for  it.  Having  enlarged 
his  knowledge  of  Dante  in  his  loved  city,  he  went  in  spring  to 
Rome,  and  in  both  places  used  every  opportunity  to  gain  knowl- 
edge of  the  church  building  and  the  art  of  the  Middle  Ages  and 
the  Renaissance  by  obtaining  access  to  the  old  records  and  his- 
tories. He  secured  for  a  summer  residence  for  the  family  the 
stately  Villa  Apannocchi  a  little  way  outside  the  walls  of  Siena 
whence  he  made  excursions  with  Ruskin.  There,  as  everywhere, 
the  Nortons  were  In  happy  relations  even  with  the  humble  people 
around  them.^ 

'  For  the  charms  of  this  villa  life,  see  Letters  of  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  edited  by  his 
daughter  Sara  and  M.  A.  DeWolfe  Howe. 


Longfellow  notes  December  31:  "The  year  ends  with  a  Club 
dinner.  Agassiz  is  not  well  enough  to  be  there.  But  Emerson  and 
Holmes  of  the  older  set  were,  and  so  I  was  not  quite  alone." 

Two  new  members  were  chosen  during  this  year,  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  upright,  strong,  clear-headed  statesman,  who  through 
years  of  anxiety  and  peril  served  his  country  bravely  and  well, 
and  Charles  William  Eliot,  President  of  Harvard  University. 


CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  who  in  the  third  generation  of  a  remark- 
able family  upheld  its  high  reputation  for  ability  and  public  serv- 
ice, possessed,  to  use  his  son's  words,  "a  shyness  of  temper"  and 
a  "manner  chill  and  repellent"  which  made  a  deep  impression 
upon  his  contemporaries  and  have  become  associated  with  his 
name  in  the  minds  of  his  countrymen  to  such  an  extent  as  appre- 
ciably to  affect  their  recognition  of  his  claim  to  their  gratitude. 
It  is  a  singular  confirmation  of  the  proverbial  saying,  "Manners 
make  the  man."  They  certainly  make  what  his  contemporaries  be- 
lieve to  be  the  man. 

Yet  though  his  career  did  not  touch  the  popular  imagination  as 
did  theirs,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  either  his  grandfather  or  his 
father  rendered  more  valuable  service  to  our  Country  than  did  he. 
He  had  a  very  exceptional  education.  Before  he  was  two  years 
old  his  father,  appointed  Minister  to  Russia,  carried  him  to  St. 
Petersburg,  where  he  remained  for  nearly  six  years,  when  his 
mother  left  that  city  and  in  her  travelling  carriage  made  a  journey 
in  midwinter  through  Europe  to  Paris  where  she  rejoined  his 
father.  Her  way  lay  through  a  country  filled  with  the  troops  of  the 
Allies,  and  she  reached  her  journey's  end  three  days  after  Napoleon, 
returned  from  Elba,  had  been  welcomed  in  Paris.  During  the  next 
two  years  he  was  in  England  at  a  boarding-school,  while  his  father 
was  our  Minister  at  the  Court  of  St.  James,  and  was  taught  by  his 
schoolmates  to  understand  Englishmen.  When  at  ten  years  old 
he  returned  to  the  United  States  he  had  learned  to  speak  French 
as  his  native  tongue,  and  had  seen  Europe  during  what  was  until 
now  the  most  exciting  period  in  her  history,  the  years  of  Napo- 
leon's greatest  power  and  his  final  downfall  —  a  rare  educational 
experience.  While  his  father  became  Secretary  of  State,  he  re- 
turned to  Quincy  where  he  remained  with  his  grandmother,  Mrs. 
John  Adams,  until  her  death.  He  went  to  the  Boston  Latin  School 
and  thence  to  Harvard  College,  where  he  graduated  in  1825  at  the 


Charles  Francis  Adams  485 

age  of  eighteen,  a  few  months  after  his  father  had  become  the 
President  of  the  United  States. 

Naturally  he  joined  his  parents  in  Washington  and  for  the  next 
three  years  lived  in  the  White  House,  where  as  the  President's 
son  he  had  the  best  possible  opportunities  for  seeing  at  close  range 
the  leading  men  of  the  Country,  and  learning  perhaps  the  important 
lesson  taught  by  Chancellor  Oxenstiern,  '''' quam  parva  sapientia 
regitur  mundus.^'  Surely  never  was  a  young  man  better  fitted  by 
inheritance,  early  association,  and  training  to  play  a  great  part  in 
public  life. 

Yet  his  position  had  its  counterbalancing  disadvantages.  "To 
whom  much  is  given,  of  him  much  shall  be  required."  The  son  and 
the  grandson  of  Presidents,  he  grew  up  under  the  shadow  of  their 
names,  and  his  immaturity  was  tested  by  comparison  with  their 
maturity.  A  young  man  with  that  modesty  which  should  belong 
to  youth  must  shrink  from  the  comparison  and  hesitate  to  run  the 
risk  of  discrediting  the  family  by  failure.  In  his  case,  moreover, 
the  affairs  of  his  father  were  so  involved  that,  to  save  him  from 
great  embarrassment  and  mortification,  the  son  was  obliged  to  take 
charge  of  his  matters,  and  by  provident  and  skilful  management 
reestablished  the  situation.  During  the  period  from  1828  to  1843 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  who  had  adopted  the  law  as  his  profes- 
sion, was  occupied  with  practice  and  the  care  of  his  father's 
aifairs,  while  he  also  contributed  various  articles  on  historical  sub- 
jects to  the  North  American  Review,  and  began  the  work  of  arrang- 
ing the  papers  of  John  Adams.  He  also  achieved  a  literary  success 
with  the  Letters  of  Mrs.  Adams. 

Till  1840  he  had  resisted  any  temptation  to  take  part  in  politics, 
but  in  that  year  he  became  a  Whig  candidate  for  the  Massachu- 
setts Legislature  and  was  elected.  He  served  for  three  years  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  and  two  years  in  the  Senate  with 
increasing  influence,  and  the  experience  was  of  great  value  to  him 
if  only  because  it  disabused  his  mind  of  the  impression  that  the 
public  was  prejudiced  against  him  either  on  account  of  his  family 
or  because  of  some  personal  trait.  The  Anti-Slavery  agitation  in  its 
early  stages  did  not  touch  him,  and  he  had  little  sympathy  with 
the  Abolition  leaders,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  impossible 


4^6  T'he  Saturday  Club 

that  he  should  do  anything  to  uphold  slavery.  Thus,  in  August, 
1835,  he  speaks  in  his  diary  of  a  meeting  then  proposed  to  counter- 
act Abolition  projects,  and  saying,  "the  application  is  signed  by 
most  of  our  respectable  citizens,"  adds,  "I  am  glad  I  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it."  He  watched  with  disapproval  his  father's  Anti- 
Slavery  activity  in  the  National  House  of  Representatives,  but 
finally  saw  that  he  was  right. 

It  is  interesting  in  his  case,  as  in  that  of  Mr.  Emerson  and  Mr. 
Sumner,  to  see  how  slow  they  were  to  realize  the  importance  of  the 
slavery  question,  and  to  trace  the  steps  by  which  they  were  gradu- 
ally converted  from  indifferent  spectators  to  active  opponents  of 
slavery.  With  Mr.  Adams  the  conversion  was  more  rapid  than 
with  others.  Thus  we  find  him  recording  in  his  diary  the  effect 
produced  on  him  by  Dr.  Channing's  pamphlet  upon  slavery,  which 
he  says  is  "certainly  a  very  powerful  production  and  worthy  of 
deeper  consideration  than  it  has  yet  been  in  the  way  of  receiving." 
A  few  months  later  he  says,  "While  I  entirely  dissented  from  the 
abolition  views  respecting  the  District  of  Columbia  ...  I  would 
by  no  means  give  to  the  principle  of  slavery  anything  more  than 
the  toleration  which  the  Constitution  has  granted."  When  Love- 
joy  had  been  murdered,  and  the  city  government  of  Boston  tried  to 
refuse  the  use  of  Faneuil  Hall  for  a  meeting  to  protest  against 
mob  rule,  he  wrote:  "The  craven  spirit  has  got  about  as  far  in 
Boston  as  it  can  well  go.  I  had  a  warm  argument  in  Mr.  Brooks's 
room  with  two  or  three  of  my  [wife's]  connections  there.  They  are 
always  of  the  conservative  order  and  I  cannot  often  be."  He  was 
present  at  the  meeting  where  James  T.  Austin  made  the  speech  in 
defence  of  the  mob  which  brought  Wendell  Phillips  to  his  feet  in 
flaming  indignation  and  gave  to  the  cause  of  Abolition  its  most  elo- 
quent advocate,  and  in  his  diary  he  describes  what  happened,  and 
concludes,  "I  confess  nothing  could  exceed  the  mixed  disgust  and 
indignation  which  moved  me  at  the  doctrines  of  the  learned  ex- 
pounder of  mob  law." 

A  fortnight  later  he  writes,  "  I  wish  I  could  be  an  entire  Aboli- 
tionist, but  it  is  impossible.  My  mind  will  not  come  down  to  the 
point";  and  the  next  year  after  listening  to  a  debate  in  the  House 
of  Representatives  we  find  him  writing,  "Nothing  can  save  this 


Charles  Francis  Adams  487 

Country  from  entire  perversion,  morally  and  politically,  but  the 
predominance  of  the  Abolition  principle." 

The  Lovejoy  murder  was  In  November,  1837,  and  the  words 
which  have  just  been  quoted  were  written  in  that  and  the  following 
year.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  in  the  Massachusetts 
Legislature  he  became  a  leader  on  all  questions  connected  with 
slavery.  Mr.  C.  F.  Adams,  Jr.,  in  his  biography  of  his  father  enum- 
erates five  subjects  involving  national  Issues  on  which  the  action 
of  the  legislature  was  finally  shaped  by  him.  Of  these,  four  are 
connected  with  slavery;  "the  law  authorizing  the  marriage  of 
persons  of  different  colour;  the  Latimer  fugitive  slave  case;  the  con- 
troversy arising  out  of  the  expulsion  of  Mr.  Hoar  from  South  Caro- 
lina by  the  mob  of  Charleston;  and  the  resistance  to  the  annexa- 
tion of  Texas  " ;  and  on  the  last  day  of  his  service,.March  26,  1 845, 
he  records,  "My  resolutions  placing  the  Whig  Party  and  the  State 
on  the  basis  of  resistance  to  slavery  in  the  general  Government 
passed  the  House  by  a  vote  of  five  to  one  and  constitute,  as  It 
seems  to  me,  a  fair  termination  of  my  labours."  It  is  amusing  to 
find  this  man,  believed  by  the  public  to  be  cold  and  unsympathetic, 
reviewing  in  a  few  words  his  legislative  experience  and  saying, 
"My  defects  of  temper  and  excessive  impetuosity  have  now  and 
then  brought  me  Into  error  which  I  have  repented." 

His  refusal  to  serve  longer  terminated  his  career  in  the  Legis- 
lature of  Massachusetts,  but  he  was  now  prepared  to  act  In  a 
wider  sphere.  It  is  Impossible,  if  It  were  desirable.  In  a  sketch  like 
this  to  do  more  than  give  a  bare  outline  of  Mr.  Adams's  career 
from  this  time  on.  On  May  23,  1846,  at  his  call  five  men  met  at 
the  State  House  In  Boston  to  consider  the  propriety  of  establishing 
a  newspaper  to  oppose  the  aggression  of  slavery.  These  men  were 
John  G.  Palfrey,  Charles  Sumner,  Henry  Wilson,  and  Stephen  C. 
Phillips.  It  Is  not  too  much  to  say  that  then  and  there  began  the 
political  campaign  against  slavery  which  was  to  be  conducted 
within  the  lines  of  the  Constitution ;  that  then  and  there  was  planted 
the  seed  of  the  Republican  Party,  though  the  sowers  did  not 
realize  what  that  seed  would  bring  forth. 

The  newspaper  was  founded  and  entitled  The  Whig,  and  it  be- 
came the  organ  of  the  "Conscience"  Whigs  of  Massachusetts, 


4^8  'The  Saturday  Club 

and  it  stood  for  the  doctrine  that  the  only  way  to  save  the 
Union  was  "  the  total  abolition  of  slavery  —  the  complete  eradi- 
cation of  the  fatal  influence  it  is  exercising  over  the  policy  of  the 
general  Government."  Its  first  number  appeared  on  June  i,  1846, 
and  for  some  two  years  Mr.  Adams  was  its  unpaid  editor  and  the 
voice  of  the  Conscience  Whigs.  He  had  become  an  Abolitionist, 
but  the  newspaper  weapon  with  which  he  undertook  the  contest 
against  the  gigantic  wrong  then  entrenched  in  every  department 
of  the  Government  and  supported  by  both  great  political  parties 
and  by  every  strong  force  in  the  Country,  political,  financial,  re- 
ligious, and  scholastic,  was  like  the  sling  and  stone  of  David.  It 
was  twenty-two  inches  by  sixteen  in  size,  and  had  four  pages  of 
six  columns  each,  of  which  one  only  was  given  to  news  and  edito- 
rials, and  it  had  two  hundred  and  twelve  paying  subscribers.  It 
was  none  the  less  a  distinct  power  during  the  sharp  conflicts  over 
the  Mexican  War  and  the  annexation  of  Texas,  and  Mr.  Adams 
conducted  it  with  courage,  vigour,  and  absolute  plainness  of 
speech.  He  was  steadily  active  in  all  the  political  contests  of  the 
day  between  Mr.  Webster  and  his  followers  and  Mr.  Sumner, 
taking  sides  with  the  latter  until  the  contest  between  cotton  and 
conscience  resulted  in  the  revolt  of  1848,  and  the  convention  at 
Buffalo  which  nominated  as  the  candidates  of  the  Free-Soil  Party 
Martin  Van  Buren  for  President  and  Mr.  Adams  for  Vice-Presi- 
dent. When  the  leader  of  the  Western  delegates  in  the  convention 
nominated  Mr.  Adams  and  moved  that  the  nomination  be  made 
unanimous,  R.  H.  Dana  says,  "Never  since  my  ears  first  admitted 
sound  have  I  heard  such  an  acclamation.  Men  sprang  upon  the 
tops  of  the  seats,  threw  their  hats  into  the  air,  and  even  to  the 
celling."  Of  this  convention  Mr.  Adams  said  many  years  later, 
"For  plain,  downright  honesty  of  purpose  to  effect  high  ends 
without  a  whisper  of  bargain  and  sale,  I  doubt  whether  any  similar 
one  has  been  its  superior,  either  before  or  since." 

The  nominations  did  not  defeat  General  Taylor  and  polled 
about  300,000  votes,  but  the  movement  was  another  step  towards 
the  formation  of  the  Republican  Party  and  the  destruction  of  slav- 
ery. It  gave  Mr.  Adams  national  prominence  and  showed  that 
there  was  another  Adams  who  was  willing  to  lead  a  forlorn  hope 


Charles  Francis  Adams  4^9 

and  to  stand  for  principle  without  regard  to  personal  consequence. 
There  followed  years  of  private  life  devoted  largely  to  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  John  Adams  papers  for  publication,  which  was  com- 
pleted in  1856.  Meanwhile  the  Know-Nothing  Party,  with  whose 
proscription  of  foreign-born  citizens  Mr.  Adams  had  no  sympathy, 
for  some  years  controlled  the  politics  of  Massachusetts,  and  with 
the  birth  and  growth  of  the  Republican  Party  had  gone  the  way 
of  many  another  ephemeral  organization.  The  campaign  of  1856 
had  been  fought  and  lost  by  the  Republicans,  and  in  1858  the  door 
again  opened  for  Mr.  Adams.  He  was  elected  as  a  Representative 
in  Congress  and  took  his  seat  on  December  3,  1859,  in  the  Congress 
which  preceded  the  Civil  War.  While  his  party  had  a  majority 
in  Congress,  the  executive  departments  and  the  whole  official 
society  of  Washington  was  Democratic,  and  the  social  influences 
of  the  capital  were  In  sympathy  with  the  Administration.  Mr. 
Adams,  never  disposed  to  press  for  his  own  advancement,  did  not 
seek  appointments  on  leading  committees,  and  as  a  result  was 
made  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Manufactures,  a  committee 
without  a  room  and  without  business,  so  that  he  was  without  any 
official  standing  which  secured  him  the  ear  of  the  House.  During 
the  first  session,  In  response  to  a  pressure  from  his  constituents, 
he  spoke  once,  stating  calmly  but  firmly  the  position  of  the 
Republican  Party  and  his  belief  in  the  certain  failure  of  any  at- 
tempt to  dissolve  the  Union,  and  the  position  which  he  established 
in  the  House  may  be  gathered  from  Howell  Cobb's  reference  to 
him  as  "the  only  member  never  out  of  order"  and  the  statement 
in  his  diary,  "There  Is  something  singular  In  the  civility  formally 
paid  me  on  the  other  side  of  the  house.  I  have  never  courted  one  of 
them,  but  I  have  insulted  no  one";  following  in  this  at  least  one 
of  the  rules  laid  down  by  a  most  distinguished  English  admiral, 
"Never  quarrel.    Never  explain.    Never  drudge." 

In  the  campaign  which  followed  he  supported  Mr.  Seward  for 
the  Republican  nomination,  and  though  not  a  speaker,  went  with 
him  on  an  extended  election  tour  and  was  himself  reelected  to 
Congress. 

The  last  session  of  the  Thirty-sixth  Congress  brought  him  into 
a  position  of  leadership.    The  country  was  face  to  face  with  the 


49 o  "The  Saturday  Club 

question  whether  the  election  of  Lincoln  was  to  be  followed  by  dis- 
union, and  the  pressing  duty  of  the  hour  was  to  prevent  this  ca- 
lamity if  possible,  or  at  least  to  postpone  secession  until  the  newly 
elected  President,  Mr.  Lincoln,  had  been  inaugurated.  The  coun- 
cils of  the  Republican  Party  were  divided.  Some  of  its  leaders 
believed  that  the  threats  of  secession  were  merely  made  for  politi- 
cal effect  and  intended  to  frighten  the  Republicans  into  conces- 
sions which  would  nullify  their  victory.  Others  took  them  more 
seriously  and  were  satisfied  that  secession  would  come,  but 
wished  to  limit  its  area  and  to  delay  decisive  action  until  the 
powers  of  the  Government  were  in  Republican  hands.  The  first 
opposed  any  talk  of  compromise  as  weakening  and  demoralizing. 
The  second  desired  if  possible  to  put  the  secession  leaders  in  the 
wrong  before  theCountryand  thus  strengthen  theUnion  sentiment 
which  was  strong  in  the  Border  States  and  in  some  at  least  of  the 
Southern  States  like  Virginia,  and  thus  perhaps  retain  them  in  the 
Union.  Mr.  Sumner,  just  resuming  the  position  for  which  he  had 
been  incapacitated  by  the  blows  of  Preston  Brooks,  was  promi- 
nent among  those  who  opposed  any  suggestion  of  composition, 
while  Mr.  Adams  took  the  lead  on  the  other  side  and  the  discus- 
sions between  them  became  so  embittered  that  their  relations, 
hitherto  close,  were  never  again  the  same.  In  his  son's  biography 
of  him  occurs  the  following:  "Mr.  Adams  did  not  at  the  time  fully 
appreciate  the  gravity  of  the  situation  or  the  irresistible  force  of 
the  influences  at  work.  .  .  .  He  never  did  appreciate  them.  Re- 
ferring to  the  secession  movement  of  1861,  he  twelve  years  later 
expressed  the  astonishing  belief  that  'One  single  hour  of  the  will 
displayed  by  General  Jackson'  in  1833  'would  have  stifled  the 
fire  in  its  cradle.'  A  similar  opinion  was  expressed  by  Charles 
Sumner  in  1863  ^^'^  t)y  the  biographers  of  Lincoln  seventeen  years 
later."  It  is  not  entirely  clear  that  Mr.  Adams  and  the  others 
were  wrong  In  their  opinion.  At  least  it  Is  shared  by  others  in  a 
position  to  know.  A  distinguished  citizen  of  South  Carolina,  the 
scion  of  a  leading  family,  an  officer  in  the  Confederate  service, 
the  Speaker  of  the  South  Carolina  House,  and  eminent  in  every 
way,  said  to  the  writer  a  few  years  ago:  "There  were  two  ways  in 
which  secession  could  have  been  prevented.  Two  regiments  of  regu- 


Charles  Francis  Adams  49^ 

lars  In  Charleston  could  have  stopped  it,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
if  Mr.  Lincoln  had  let  South  Carolina  go  without  any  effort  to 
hold  her,  the  other  States  would  not  have  followed  her  example 
and  in  a  few  months  she  would  have  been  begging  to  come  back." 
Such  an  opinion  from  such  a  source  is  not  to  be  lightly  disre- 
garded. In  this  connection  we  should  remember  that  Mr.  Seward 
was  declaring  that  the  President  accepted  the  dogma  that  "the 
Federal  Government  could  not  reduce  them  [the  seceding  States] 
to  obedience  by  conquest."  Whatever  might  have  been,  it  was 
clearly  the  duty  of  a  statesman  to  find  out  if  possible  what  the 
Southern  leaders  really  meant,  whether  any  reasonable  concession 
would  affect  their  purpose,  and,  if  not,  to  delay  secession  as  long 
as  practicable.   This  was  the  policy  adopted  by  Mr.  Adams. 

As  the  representative  of  Massachusetts  on  the  Committee  of 
Thirty-three,  one  from  each  State,  which  was  appointed  by  the 
House  of  Representatives  at  the  opening  of  Congress  in  Decem- 
ber, i860,  Mr.  Adams  occupied  a  position  of  great  influence,  and 
during  the  whole  of  the  critical  session  laboured  in  every  way 
to  advance  this  purpose.  He  favoured  discussion,  consultation, 
and  some  measure  of  concession  which  should  concede  nothing 
vital,  but  yield  non-essential  points.  He  sought  to  make  the  real 
purpose  of  the  secessionists  plain  by  putting  them  in  a  position 
where  they  must  either  accept  reasonable  proposals,  or  by  reject- 
ing them  confess  that  they  were  determined  upon  dissolution  in 
any  event.  In  the  Committee  of  Thirty-three  he  offered  propos- 
als, afterwards  in  substance  adopted  by  the  Committee,  which 
made  distinct  concessions,  and  in  the  judgment  of  contemporary 
Republicans  went  too  far,  but  in  his  judgment  this  was  necessary 
to  accomplish  the  result  at  which  he  aimed,  and  there  was  in  the 
then  state  of  opinion  little  danger  that  they  would  be  accepted  by 
the  secessionists.  It  Is  probable  that  the  latter  did  not  feel  sure 
that  they  could  carry  all  the  States  which  they  wished  out  of  the 
Union  before  the  Republicans  were  actually  in  power,  and  they 
perhaps  therefore  did  not  press  for  action.  Whatever  the  reasons, 
the  judgment  of  Mr.  Adams  was  vindicated  and  the  session  was 
consumed  in  discussion  without  reaching  any  conclusion.  His 
purpose  was  accomplished  when  Mr.  Lincoln  was  inaugurated 


492  The  Saturday  Club 

and  the  control  of  the  Government  passed  to  the  friends  of  the 
Union.  His  course  was  approved  by  many  in  the  North  who  might 
otherwise  have  failed  to  support  the  Government  and  it  produced 
some  division  In  the  Southern  ranks.  It  undoubtedly  added  very 
much  to  Mr.  Adams's  influence  and  paved  the  way  for  his  ap- 
pointment to  the  English  Mission,  which  was  made  early  in  the 
new  Administration,  though  Mr.  Adams's  instructions  did  not 
reach  him  till  April  27. 

On  May  i,  Mr.  Adams  sailed  for  England  to  meet  the  most 
difficult  and  dangerous  situation  that  ever  confronted  an  Ameri- 
can diplomat.  The  United  States  was  Involved  in  a  civil  war  and, 
as  In  the  words  of  Mr.  Lowell,  "both  our  hands  were  full,"  the 
Government  was  In  no  position  to  meet  any  new  foe,  or  to  inspire 
any  foreign  nation  with  the  fear  of  consequences  In  case  it  favoured 
the  Confederacy.  The  situation  was  confused  and  even  our  friends 
found  it  difficult  to  understand  It.  That  a  nation  founded  on  the 
principle  that  "governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the 
consent  of  the  governed"  should  endeavour  by  force  to  retain  un- 
der Its  sway  a  large  body  of  its  people  who  did  not  consent  to  be 
governed  by  it,  seemed  an  abandonment  of  our  entire  political 
faith.  Those  who,  hating  slavery,  would  naturally  have  taken 
sides  against  the  men  who  founded  their  Confederacy  upon  slav- 
ery as  a  corner-stone,  were  chilled  by  the  official  announcement 
from  Washington  that  the  war  was  prosecuted  only  to  restore  the 
Union  and  that  It  was  not  proposed  to  Interfere  with  slavery. 
Where  both  sides  proclaimed  their  purpose  to  maintain  this  abom- 
ination, what  was  the  war  save  an  attempt  by  the  North  to  gov- 
ern the  South  against  Its  will.  It  must  be  admitted  that  this  view 
could  be  presented  plausibly  to  men  as  unable  to  apprehend  the 
true  situation  as  the  people  of  one  nation  always  are  to  under- 
stand the  politics  of  any  other,  and  till  the  war  had  gone  on  for 
some  time  the  English  people  did  not  recognize  the  real  nature 
of  the  struggle.  Though  the  Liberal  Party  was  In  power,  the  lead-^ 
ers,  with  some  Important  exceptions,  sympathized  with  the  feel- 
ings of  English  society,  which  was  friendly  to  the  Confederacy,  for 
various  reasons  which  it  is  idle  to  recall.  There  were  two  great 
dangers  to  be  met.  One  was  Intervention  by  England  and  France, 


Charles  Francis  Adams  493 

the  other  the  use  of  those  countries  as  bases  for  hostile  operations. 
Either  meant  war  between  the  United  States  and  one  or  more 
foreign  nations,  and  in  all  human  probability  such  an  addition  to 
the  forces  of  the  seceding  States  as  insured  their  triumph  and  in- 
calculable disaster  to  the  North.  It  was  Mr.  Adams's  task  to  avert 
these  dangers,  and  from  the  13th  day  of  May,  1861,  when  he 
reached  London,  till  the  8th  of  September,  1863,  when  he  was 
notified  that  the  Laird  rams  were  stopped,  his  labours  and  anx- 
ieties were  unceasing. 

Mr.  Adams  was  admirably  fitted  for  his  work.  He  represented 
and  was  known  to  represent  the  best  that  America  could  produce. 
He  was  a  gentleman,  a  man  of  the  world,  the  inheritor  of  a  great 
name,  and  coming  with  all  the  prestige  that  these  things  could 
give  him.  He  was  with  all  his  heart  and  soul  enlisted  in  the  cause 
of  his  Country,  he  appealed  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  English 
people,  for  he  was  a  bitter  opponent  of  slavery,  and  personally  he 
was  cool,  firm,  self-controlled,  very  intelligent,  and  with  many  of 
the  qualities  which  characterized  Lord  John  Russell,  the  English 
Foreign  Secretary,  so  that  they  understood  each  other.  Mr. 
Adams  was  clearly  a  man  who  would  not  threaten  and  who  knew 
and  would  maintain  his  own  rights. 

The  story  of  Mr.  Adams's  mission  has  been  told  so  often  that 
it  is  needless  to  repeat  it.  Only  the  briefest  outline  is  possible 
within  the  limits  of  this  sketch.  The  very  morning  after  his  ar- 
rival in  London  the  newspapers  published  the  Queen's  proclama- 
tion of  neutrality,  which  at  the  time  we  regarded  as  a  hostile 
.act,  but  which  has  since  been  recognized  as  the  only  step  possible 
in  the  circumstances  and  as  really  of  value  to  the  Government  of 
the  United  States,  since  belligerency  gives  the  combatant  rights 
over  neutral  shipping  which  were  of  great  importance  to  us  in  the 
enforcement  of  the  blockade.  Mr.  Seward's  extraordinary  idea 
that  the  way  to  restore  the  Union  was  to  provoke  a  war  with  the 
leading  powers  of  Europe,  an  idea  communicated  to  Mr.  Adams 
by  Mr.  Seward  in  a  dispatch  received  on  June  10,  made  him  feel 
that  the  situation  was  very  precarious.  We  find  in  his  diary:  "The 
Government  seems  ready  to  declare  war  with  all  the  powers  of 
Europe,  and  almost  instructs  me  to  withdraw  from  communica- 


494  "The  Saturday  Club 

tion  with  the  Minister  here  in  a  certain  contingency.  I  scarcely 
know  how  to  understand  Mr.  Seward."  Happily  Mr.  Lincoln  at 
home  refused  to  sanction  the  policy,  and  Mr.  Adams  in  London 
was  absolutely  out  of  sympathy  with  it.  His  feeling  is  shown  by  the 
words  in  his  diary:  "My  duty  here  is,  so  far  as  I  can  do  it  honestly, 
to  prevent  the  neutrals  from  coming  to  a  downright  quarrel.  It 
seems  to  me  like  throwing  the  game  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 
...  If  a  conflict  with  a  handful  of  slaveholding  States  is  to  bring 
us  to  (our  present  pass),  what  are  we  to  do  when  we  throw  down 
the  glove  to  Europe.'*"  One  cannot  help  wondering  where  the  world 
would  be  to-day  if  the  Chicago  Convention  had  nominated  Seward 
instead  of  Lincoln,  as  Mr.  Adams  and  a  host  of  other  wise  men 
desired.  Fortunately  there  was  then  no  Atlantic  cable,  and  in  its 
absence  an  Ambassador  was  not  followed  by  daily  messages,  so 
that  the  Minister  could  exercise  a  much  larger  discretion  than  is 
now  possible,  and  by  the  exercise  of  sound  discretion  he  pre- 
served pleasant  relations  till  all  danger  that  Mr.  Seward's  coun- 
sels would  prevail  had  passed. 

In  common  with  the  other  foreign  representatives  of  the  United 
States  Mr.  Adams  early  in  his  mission  was  instructed  to  make 
some  agreement  with  England  for  the  adhesion  of  the  United 
States  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  which  among  other  things 
abolished  privateering.  Until  this  time  the  United  States  had 
refused  to  become  a  party  to  this  treaty  unless  it  was  agreed  that 
private  property  on  the  sea  should  be  exempt  from  capture,  and 
the  proposal  now  to  abandon  this  position  when  the  Confederate 
States  with  no  property  at  sea  were  proposing  to  employ  privateers 
embarrassed  the  English  Government  professedly  neutral  and 
by  no  means  hostile  to  the  Confederacy.  If  the  proposal  of  the 
United  States  was  accepted,  England  might  be  called  upon  to 
treat  Confederate  privateers  as  pirates,  and  the  Alabama  and 
Florida  would  have  been  outlaws.  Hence,  after  long  and  unsatis- 
factory negotiations.  Lord  Russell  replied  to  Mr.  Adams's  pro- 
posal to  accept  the  Declaration  of  Paris  absolutely  by  imposing 
the  condition  that  the  new  convention  should  have  no  effect  "di- 
rect or  indirect  on  the  internal  difficulties  now  prevailing  in  the 
United  States."  This  ended  the  negotiation,  but  it  left  the  English 


Charles  Francis  Adams  495 

Government  in  an  embarrassing  position,  since  the  Declaration 
of  Paris  offered  every  nation  the  opportunity  to  become  a  party 
by  notifying  its  election  to  do  so,  and  this  offer  was  now  with- 
drawn when  for  the  first  time  it  became  a  practical  question  whether 
the  Declaration  of  Paris  should  govern  the  action  of  England  and 
the  United  States.  Lord  Russell's  course  was  natural,  but  it  can- 
not have  been  agreeable  to  him. 

Then  out  of  a  clear  sky  came  the  taking  of  the  Confederate 
envoys,  Mason  and  Slidell,  by  Captain  Wilkes  from  the  British 
mail  steamer  Trent  on  the  high  seas.  This  unwarranted  act,  ex- 
citing in  the  United  States  the  wildest  enthusiasm  and  in  England 
the  deepest  indignation,  brought  the  two  countries  to  the  verge  of 
war.  Had  the  Atlantic  cable  been  then  in  operation  it  would  prob- 
ably have  been  impossible  to  avoid  it.  Happily  the  slower  methods 
of  the  day  gave  both  countries  time  to  cool  and  their  statesmen 
time  to  think,  and  the  incident  was  closed  happily  by  the  sur- 
render of  the  envoys.  The  negotiations  which  resulted  in  the 
surrender  were  carried  on  at  Washington  so  that  Mr.  Adams  was 
not  directly  concerned  in  them.  His  duty  was  to  keep  cool,  to 
preserve  pleasant  relations  with  Lord  Russell,  and  to  keep  his 
Government  fully  advised  of  the  situation  in  England  and  its 
dangers.  His  dispatch,  written  shortly  after  his  first  interview 
with  Lord  Russell  on  the  subject,  reached  Washington  in  time  for 
the  conference  at  which  the  final  decision  was  reached,  and  un- 
doubtedly contributed  to  the  result. 

The  situation  in  England  after  this  became  very  acute.  The 
blockade  cut  off  the  supply  of  cotton  upon  which  the  English  man- 
ufacturers depended,  and  the  condition  in  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts became  most  distressing.  During  the  six  months  ending  in 
May,  1862,  less  than  one  per  cent  as  much  cotton  was  received  in 
England  from  America  as  in  the  same  six  months  during  the  pre- 
vious year.  "By  the  end  of  September,  1862,  out  of  80,000  opera- 
tives in  five  localities  in  Lancashire  only  14,000  were  working  full 
time."  In  October  176,000  people  in  twenty-four  unions  were  re- 
ceiving poor  relief,  in  January,  1863,  the  number  of  persons  de- 
pendent on  relief  was  estimated  at  457,000,  and  in  France  condi- 
tions were  not  better.  It  was  an  appalling  situation  and  there  was 


49 6  The  Saturday  Club 

no  apparent  escape  from  it  while  the  United  States  maintained  its 
blockade  of  the  Southern  ports.  The  French  Emperor  was  anxious 
to  intervene  and  was  trying  to  persuade  the  English  Government 
to  join  him  in  so  doing.  The  pressure  from  commercial  circles  was 
extreme  as  may  well  be  imagined.  On  our  side  of  the  water  the 
year  1862  had  opened  well  for  the  Government,  but  during  the 
summer  the  Confederates  had  won  conspicuous  victories,  and  their 
partisans  in  England  were  much  elated.  It  was  a  period  of  acute 
anxiety  for  Mr.  Adams  as  for  every  friend  of  the  North. 

Happily  the  operatives  who  were  the  greatest  sufferers  felt  that 
the  North  was  fighting  for  their  cause,  and  they  bore  their  suffer- 
ings patiently.  Richard  Cobden,  John  Bright,  and  W.  E.  Forster 
who  represented  the  manufacturing  districts  and  were  the  recog- 
nized leaders  of  the  labouring  classes  stood  firm  against  inter- 
vention. Members  of  the  Cabinet  too  numerous  and  influential 
to  be  disregarded  indicated  clearly  their  opposition,  and  the  Cabi- 
net meeting  called  to  decide  on  intervention  was  not  held.  Mr. 
Adams  was  under  positive  instructions  to  meet  firmly  any  sug- 
gestion by  the  English  Government  of  any  purpose  "to  dictate 
or  to  mediate,  or  to  advise,  or  even  to  solicit  or  persuade."  "You 
will  answer  that  you  are  forbidden  to  debate,  to  hear,  or  in  any 
way  receive,  entertain,  or  transmit  any  communication  of  the 
kind." 

He  received  further  instructions  in  the  event  of  recognition  or 
hostile  action  to  suspend  the  exercises  of  his  functions,  and  in  case 
of  any  act  or  declaration  of  war  to  ask  for  his  passports  and  return 
at  once.  Mr.  Adams  could  only  suspect  what  was  going  on  in  the 
Cabinet,  and  what  negotiations  were  pending  with  France,  and 
feeling  the  great  danger  of  making  matters  worse  by  some  un- 
fortunate word  if  he  sought  an  interview  with  Lord  Russell,  he 
contented  himself  with  telling  his  friend  Mr.  Forster  in  confidence 
what  his  instructions  were,  leaving  him  to  act  as  he  thought  best. 
About  this  time  Gladstone  made  his  foolish  speech  in  which  he  said 
that  the  Southern  leaders  "have  made  a  nation"  and  stated  his 
opinion  that  their  success  was  "as  certain  as  any  event  yet  future 
and  contingent  can  be."  It  was  only  when  the  crisis  had  passed 
on  the  day  when  the  Cabinet  meeting  was  to  have  been  held  that 


Charles  Francis  Adams         497 

Mr.  Adams,  in  an  interview  with  Lord  Russell,  said, "  If  I  had 
entirely  trusted  to  the  construction  given  by  the  public  to  a  late 
speech,  I  should  have  begun  to  think  of  packing  my  carpet-bag  and 
trunks,"  a  remark  which  led  Lord  Russell  to  express  the  regret 
of  Lord  Palmers  ton  and  other  Ministers  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  in- 
discretion. In  this  crisis  Mr.  Adams  served  his  Country  not  by 
what  he  did,  but  by  his  wise  silence.  Had  he  hinted  at  his  instruc- 
tions, or  used  any  threatening  words,  or  even  forced  a  discussion 
with  Lord  Russell,  he  would  in  all  probability  have  precipitated 
the  action  which  he  was  anxious  to  prevent.  Few  American  am- 
bassadors would  have  shown  the  self-control  which  in  this  case  was 
the  height  of  wisdom. 

The  preliminary  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  of  September 
22,  1862,  and  the  final  edict  of  January  i,  1863,  secured  us  against 
English  intervention.  As  we  look  back,  how  short  was  the  time 
between  the  firing  on  Sumter  and  the  end  of  slavery,  yet  how  long 
it  seemed  as  it  passed.  It  strikes  us  as  extraordinary  that  the 
Proclamation  was  received  with  generally  hostile  comment  by  the 
English  press.  It  was  regarded  as  futile  at  best,  and  at  worst  as 
intended  to  provoke  a  servile  insurrection  with  all  its  horrors.  The 
misrepresentations  of  fact,  and  the  bitterly  hostile  criticism  with 
which  the  newspapers  were  filled  pass  belief,  but  these  were  the 
expressions  of  a  hostile  minority.  The  heart  of  the  English  people 
was  sound  and  soon  found  convincing  expression.  John  Bright 
spoke  first  applauding  the  Proclamation,  and  meeting  after  meet- 
ing swelled  the  chorus  of  approbation,  until  the  governors  of  Eng- 
land realized  the  feeling  of  the  people  and  recognized  that  any 
intervention  in  behalf  of  the  Confederacy  was  impossible.  This 
is  a  chapter  in  English  hisfory  that  every  one  who  loves  freedom 
should  forget.  The  folly  of  a  few  should  not  be  permitted  to 
colour  our  feeling  towards  the  great  British  nation  whose  support 
in  our  great  crisis  assured  our  victory,  and  who,  whatever  misun- 
derstanding may  have  occurred,  are  essentially  one  with  us  in  all 
that  assures  the  freedom  and  civilization  of  mankind. 

In  the  matters  which  have  been  chronicled  Mr.  Adams  served 
his  Country  by  wise  silence  and  inaction,  but  in  another  class  of 
cases  he  showed  that  he  could  act.    The  facts  in  regard  to  the 


49^  T'he  Saturday  Club 

privateer  Alabama  and  the  Laird  ironclads  have  been  many  times 
repeated.  Mr.  Adams  was  indefatigable  in  his  attempts  to  prevent 
the  escape  of  the  Alabama.  With  the  assistance  of  our  consul  at 
Liverpool,  Mr.  Dudley,  who  kept  him  fully  advised  as  to  the  facts, 
he  pressed  the  truth  vigorously  and  constantly  upon  the  British 
Government  only  to  encounter  doubt  and  incredulity  and  in- 
vincible repugnance  to  act  until  the  Alabama  did  escape,  and  by 
her  subsequent  course  proved  that  he  had  been  right  and  that  the 
English  Government  had  either  been  foolishly  blind  or  wilfully 
negligent. 

The  Alabama  did  enormous  damage,  but  the  Laird  rams,  iron- 
clad vessels  which  to-day  would  be  laughed  at,  but  which  in  the 
then  state  of  naval  architecture  were  more  formidable  than  any 
war  vessel  in  the  American  Navy,  if  let  loose  were  able  to  sink 
our  blockading  fleet  and  perhaps  change  the  whole  aspect  of  the 
struggle.  The  plot  to  send  them  forth  was  skilfully  conceived  and 
legally  perfect,  and  the  British  Cabinet  faltered  and  hesitated 
till  the  last  moment.  It  was  when  his  cause  seemed  lost  that  Mr. 
Adams  sent  Lord  Russell  the  dispatch  which  contained  the  words, 
better  remembered  than  any  in  our  diplomatic  history,  "It  would 
be  superfluous  in  me  to  point  out  to  your  lordship  that  this  is  war." 
This  dispatch  was  sent  on  September  5,  1863,  and  the  Morn- 
ing Post  of  September  8  announced  that  the  rams  were  stopped.^ 

From  that  day  Mr.  Adams  had  a  different  position,  and  until 
he  resigned  his  mission  in  1868  he  was  implicitly  trusted  at  home 
and  universally  respected  abroad.  In  a  very  difficult  position 
he  had  so  conducted  himself  as  to  deserve  the  praise  of  James 
Russell  Lowell,  his  future  successor,  who  said,  "None  of  our  gen- 
erals in  the  field,  not  Grant  himself,  did  us  better  or  more  trying 
service  than  he  in  his  forlorn  outpost  of  London.  Cavour  did 
hardly  more  for  Italy." 

One  legacy  of  his  diplomatic  service  remained,  the  so-called 
Alabama  Claims.  The  war  left  the  relations  between  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain  in  a  precarious  condition.  The  course 
of  the  English  Ministry  during  the  war,  the  hostile  and  sneering 
criticisms  of  English  statesmen  and  newspapers,  and,  above  all, 

^  See  note  on  page  502. 


Charles  Francis  Adams  499 

the  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  North,  which,  as  we  knew,  was 
fighting  to  abolish  slavery,  on  the  part  of  men  who  had  always 
condemned  us  because  we  did  not  abolish  it,  had  left  in  this  coun- 
try a  great  feeling  of  irritation,  well  expressed  by  Mr.  Lowell  in 
the  second  series  of  Biglow  Papers.  When  men  like  him  felt  as  he 
did  it  was  perfectly  clear  that  there  must  be  a  latent  indignation 
among  the  masses  that  boded  ill  for  the  future.  Great  Britain  real- 
ized her  mistake,  knew  that,  as  Lowell  said,  "her  bonds  were  held 
by  Fate,  like  all  the  world's  besides,"  and  her  statesmen  began  to 
bestir  themselves.  As  a  result  we  have  the  Geneva  Arbitration 
which  resulted  in  a  payment  by  Great  Britain  and,  as  far  as  was 
humanly  possible,  mended  the  relations  between  the  two  countries. 
The  Geneva  Tribunal  consisted  of  three  neutral  arbitrators, 
Mr.  Alexander  Cockburn,  Chief  Justice  of  England,  and  Mr.  Adams. 
It  nearly  encountered  shipwreck  at  the  outset,  for  when  the  Amer- 
ican case  was  presented  it  contained  such  an  enormous  claim  for 
indirect  damages  caused  by  the  recognition  of  belligerency  among 
other  things,  that  no  English  Government  could  live  which  put 
England  in  a  position  to  pay  so  vast  a  sum.  After  the  claims  were 
presented  the  tribunal  adjourned  for  six  months,  and  during  the 
interval  the  English  people  became  very  much  excited  and  there 
was  very  grave  danger  that  the  arbitration  would  be  abandoned. 
Mr.  Adams  saved  the  situation,  and,  after  negotiation  with  the 
representatives  of  England  and  conference  with  his  colleagues, 
moved  that  the  claims  for  indirect  damages  be  ruled  out  of  con- 
sideration as  unjustified  by  international  law.  This  was  done  and 
the  arbitration  proceeded  to  its  satisfactory  end.  Mr.  Adams 
alone  was  in  a  position  to  take  this  step,  and  though  it  involved  a 
grave  responsibility  he  did  not  hesitate,  and  two  great  nations 
should  be  grateful  to  him  for  what  he  did.  Even  if  he  believed  that 
he  was  assured  of  his  own  Government's  support  before  he  pro- 
ceeded, his  act  was  none  the  less  wise  and  brave.  In  this  connec- 
tion a  single  personal  reminiscence  may  be  ventured.  Mr,  Adams 
told  the  writer  that  when  the  arbitrators  entered  the  room  in 
which  the  sittings  of  the  Geneva  Tribunal  were  to  be  held,  it  was 
found  that  on  a  raised  dais  were  seats  for  the  three  neutral  arbi- 
trators, while  on  a  lower  level  in  front  was  a  long  table  with  a  seat 


500  "The  Saturday  Club 

at  each  end,  one  for  Chief  Justice  Cockburn,  the  other  for  Mr. 
Adams.  Upon  seeing  it  the  Chief  Justice  turned  to  Mr.  Adams 
and  said,  "You  see  that  they  understand  perfectly  what  our  re- 
lation is  to  this  tribunal." 

In  the  spring  of  1872  it  was  clear  that  many  leaders  of  public 
opinion  in  this  country  were  disgusted  with  the  first  adminis- 
tration of  President  Grant  and  anxious  to  defeat  him.  The 
Democratic  Party,  thoroughly  discredited  by  its  course  during 
the  war,  could  not  hope  to  find  among  its  leaders  any  man  who 
could  hope  to  defeat  so  popular  a  hero  as  the  President,  and  some 
one  who  would  make  a  strong  appeal  to  the  Country  must  be 
found  among  the  dissatisfied  Republicans.  There  was  no  one  who 
could  be  named  in  the  same  day  with  Mr.  Adams  for  the  nomina- 
tion. His  family  name,  his  tried  loyalty  to  Republican  principles, 
his  great  and  freshly  remembered  services  in  England,  and  many 
other  considerations  made  him  the  obvious  nominee,  and  he  was 
supported  by  many  of  the  best  men  in  the  country.  The  move- 
ment seemed  likely  to  succeed,  but  by  one  of  those  strange  acci- 
dents which  happen  in  politics,  Horace  Greeley,  of  all  Americans 
the  one  least  likely  to  inspire  the  Democratic  Party  with  enthu- 
siasm and  possessing  few  qualifications  for  the  chief  magistracy, 
was  nominated  in  his  stead.  Why  this  happened  has  never  been 
explained  satisfactorily,  but  in  the  opinion  of  many  a  letter  which 
Mr.  Adams  wrote  showed  such  indifference  to  the  opportunity 
that  it  alienated  his  supporters.  He  was  of  all  men  the  least  in- 
clined to  push  himself,  and  an  exaggeration  of  his  reluctance  to 
so  doing  probably  led  him  to  express  a  greater  indifference  than 
he  felt.  Whatever  the  cause,  the  choice  of  Mr.  Greeley  was  fatal 
to  the  movement,  and  General  Grant  was  reelected  triumphantly 
and  gave  the  country  an  administration  of  which  no  friend  of 
his  can  be  proud.  It  was  another  example  of  the  rule  that  a  suc- 
cessful soldier  is  not  likely  to  make  a  good  constitutional  ruler. 

Mr.  Adams's  comment  on  the  result  was  characteristic.  "This," 
he  wrote,  "was  odd  enough.  This  completely  oversets  all  the  cal- 
culations of  the  original  authors  of  the  conventions,  for  success 
with  such  a  candidate  is  out  of  the  question.  My  first  sense  is  one 
of  great  relief  at  being  out  of  the  melee.^^ 


Charles  Francis  Adams  io\ 

When  the  Geneva  Tribunal  dissolved  on  September  14,  1872, 
Mr.  Adams  wrote:  "  I  walked  home  musing.  It  is  now  eleven  years 
since  this  mission  was  given  to  me.  Through  good  report  and  evil 
report  my  action  has  been  associated  with  its  progress.  ...  I  may 
hope  to  consider  it  as  an  honourable  termination  to  my  public 
career."  So  indeed  it  proved.  He  was  then  only  sixty-five  years 
old,  but  his  work  was  done,  and  his  record  made,  a  record  of  which 
he,  his  family,  and  all  Americans  had  a  right  to  be  proud.  From 
that  time  on  he  devoted  himself  to  the  completion  of  the  literary 
labour  in  connection  with  the  papers  of  his  father  and  grand- 
father, which  he  had  undertaken  many  years  before,  and  which 
he  completed  when  the  last  volume  was  published  in  August, 
1877.  There  remained  only  quiet  and  uneventful  years  until  his 
death  on  November  21,  1886.  He  and  Mrs.  Adams  celebrated 
their  golden  wedding  in  the  home  where  his  parents  and  grand- 
parents had  welcomed  the  like  anniversary,  a  record  which  can 
hardly  be  paralleled,  so  that  his  public  and  his  private  life  were 
both  well  rounded,  and  the  final  sleep  came  in  the  fulness  of  time 
and  found  nothing  for  tears. 

He  was  a  man  whose  character  was  marked  by  great  simplicity, 
directness,  and  earnestness.  He  was  absolutely  straightforward 
and  sincere.  The  ends  he  aimed  at  were  *'his  Country's,  his  God's 
and  Truth's."  He  had  no  desire  to  shine,  little  personal  ambi- 
tion, no  taste  for  political  contests,  no  gifts  as  an  orator,  no  faculty 
for  attracting  the  crowd.  He  was  by  nature  dignified  and  self- 
controlled,  but  under  his  apparently  cool  exterior  was  concealed 
intensity  of  conviction  and  undaunted  courage.  Whether  he  was 
facing  the  social  magnates  of  Boston  in  the  fight  against  slavery, 
or  the  corresponding  forces  in  England,  when  the  same  battle 
was  fighting  there,  he  never  flinched.  Nor  was  he  without  a  sense 
of  humour,  for  the  writer  well  remembers  a  stupid  mistake  which 
he  made  in  a  game  of  whist  one  evening,  kept  Mr.  Adams  laugh- 
ing at  intervals  for  what  seemed  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

The  following  extract  from  his  diary  reveals  much  of  his  char- 
acter which  some  of  his  contemporaries  did  not  suspect.  It  was 
written  after  attending  the  funeral  of  Richard  Cobden,  and  after 
describing  the  scene  at  the  grave  he  goes  on:  "There  was  emotion 


so 2  The  Saturday  Club 

shown  by  none  so  much  as  by  Mr.  Bright.  No  pageant  could  have 
touched  me  so  much.  I  felt  my  eyes  filling  from  mere  human  sym- 
pathy. The  deceased  statesman  had  fought  his  way  to  fame  and 
honour  by  the  single  force  of  his  character.  He  had  nothing  to  give, 
no  wealth,  no  honours,  no  preferment;  a  lifelong  contempt  of  the 
ruling  class  of  his  countrymen  had  earned  for  him  their  secret 
ill-will,  marked  on  this  day  by  the  almost  total  absence  of  repre- 
sentatives here.  And  of  all  foreign  nations,  I  alone,  the  type  of  a 
great  democracy,  stood  to  bear  witness  to  the  scene.  The  real 
power  that  was  present  In  the  multitude  crowding  around  this  life- 
less form  was  not  the  less  gigantic  for  all  this  absence.  In  this 
country  it  may  be  said  to  owe  its  existence  to  Mr.  Cobden.  He 
first  taught  them  by  precept  and  example  that  the  right  of  govern- 
ment was  not  really  to  the  few  but  to  the  many.  He  shook  the 
pillars  of  aristocracy  by  proving  that  he  could  wield  influence 
without  selling  himself  to  them,  or  without  recourse  to  the  acts  of 
a  demagogue.  Thus  he  becomes  the  founder  of  a  new  school,  the 
influence  of  which  is  only  just  beginning  to  be  felt.  In  the  next 
century  the  effects  will  be  visible." 

In  this  passage  the  writer  reveals  himself  and  here  we  may  leave 
him,  believing  that  in  him  there  lived  and  died  "a  loyal,  just,  and 
upright  gentleman." 

M.S. 

Note.  —  When  Lord  Russell's  biography  was  published  in  1889, 
it  appeared  that  the  order  stopping  the  rams  was  given  on  Sep- 
tember 3  and  not  in  consequence  of  Mr.  Adams's  letter. 

Dr.  Eliot,  our  President  and  senior  member,  happily  for  us 
still  here,  must  therefore  miss  reading  our  sketch  of  his  virtues 
and  large  accomplishment. 


THE  END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Adams,  Charles  Francis,  Minister  to  Eng- 
land, 253,  313,  314,  448,  492;  offered  presi- 
dency of  Harvard,  449;  relations  with 
Sumner,  453,490;  childhood,  484;  educa- 
tion, 484, 485;  a  lawyer  and  writer,  485;  in 
the  Massachusetts  legislature,  485,  487; 
conversion  to  Abolition  principles,  486, 
487;  editor  of  the  PFhig,  487,  488;  Free- 
Soil  candidate  for  Vice-Presidency,  488; 
in  Congress,  489;  attitude  toward  seces- 
sion, 490, 491 ;  in  the  Committee  of  Thirty- 
three,  491;  last  years  and  death,  501;  his 
character,  501. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  Jr.,  20,  23 ;  on  R.  H. 
Dana,  Jr.,  41-44,  67,  68,  236;  on  Judge 
Hoar,  67,  68,  461,  462;  on  Horatio  Wood- 
man, 124;  in  the  Union  Army,  290,  344; 
biography  of  his  father  cited,  487,  490. 

Adirondack  Club,  the,  125,  128,  130,  131; 
first  camp  of,  169-76. 

Agassiz,  Alexander,  31,  36. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  23;  characteristics,  24,  30, 
31;  aided  by  Humboldt  and  Lyell,  30,  35; 
professor  at  Harvard,  30,  36;  Emerson  on, 
31,  35;  anecdotes  of,  32,  36,  37;  Holmes's 
appellation  for,  33;  friendship  with  Long- 
fellow, 33,  353;  the  six  bottles  of  wine, 
354;  influence  on  Harvard  College,  33; 
establishes  school  for  girls,  33,  34;  method 
of  teaching,  34;  Museum  of  Natural  His- 
tory, 35,  37,  38,  202,  319;  a  religious 
man,  35;  marries  Elizabeth  Cary,  36;  de- 
clines offer  of  French  Emperor,  38,  255; 
fiftieth  birthday  dinner,  13 1;  dinner  in 
1865,  396-99;  experiences  in  Brazil,  412- 
14;  on  the  dodo,  415;  health  fails,  477. 

Alabama,  the.  Confederate  privateer,  498. 

Alabama  claims,  the,  498-501. 

Albion  Hotel,  the,  on  Tremont  St.,  12,21. 

Alcott,  A.  Bronson,  and  Henry  James,  Sr., 
328,  329. 

Allingham,  William,  tribute  to  Hav/thorne, 
215,  216,  351. 

Amory,  William,  letter  of  Motley  to,  84, 186. 

Ampersand  Pond,  130,  131. 

Anderson,  Major  Robert,  Holmes's  impres- 
sion of,  405. 

Andrew,  John  Albion,  War  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  250,  290,  291,  358-65; 
works  actively  for  reelection  of  Lincoln, 
351;  becomes  a  member  of  the  Club,  356, 


363;  birth  and  education,  357;  influenced 
by  George  Thompson,  357;  an  active 
Republican,  358;  anecdotes  of,  359,  360, 
363,  364;  opinion  of  Lincoln,  361,  362; 
legislature  antagonistic  to,  362,  363; 
Norton's  estimate  of,  365;  Forbes's  esti- 
mate, 392;  offered  presidency  of  Antloch 
College,  and  Collectorship  of  Port,  409;  on 
the  race  question,  432;  suggested  as  suc- 
cessor to  Sumner  in  the  Senate,  433;  sud- 
den death, 433;  some  estimates  of,  434-36. 

Anthology  Club,  the,  10  n. 

Appleton,  Nathan,  31. 

Appleton,  Thomas  Gold,  8;  college  room- 
mate of  Motley,  83;  a  Beacon  Hill  Bos- 
tonian,  217;  some  boyhood  playmates, 
217;  school  and  college,  217,  218;  dared 
wear  a  moustache,  218;  spent  much  time 
abroad,  218-24;  had  the  temperament 
of  genius,  218,  220;  disliked  Germans,  219; 
an  art  amateur,  220,  221;  his  faith  in  the 
unseen,  222;  generous  to  artists,  222,  223; 
letter  to  Longfellow  from  Egypt,  223; 
The  Loon,  quoted,  224;  some  of  his  good 
sayings,  225;  public-spirited  and  gener- 
ous, 226;  characterized  by  Holmes,  460, 

Arnold,  Matthew,  criticism  of  Emerson, 
407. 

Aspinwall,  William  H.,  351;  commissioner 
to  England,  312,  313. 

Athenseum  Library,  the,  frequented  by 
Emerson,  12,  54;  building  of,  263. 

Atkinson,  Edward,  forms  Educational  Com- 
mission, 292. 

Atlantic  cable,  the  first,  176;  Holmes's  poem 
about,  177,  178. 

Atlantic  Club,  the,  11,  16,  18,  190. 

Atlantic  Monthly,  the,  beginning  of,  14,  17, 
128,  129;  christened  by  Dr.  Holmes,  129; 
growing,  200;  patriotic,  256. 

Austin,  James  T.,  486. 

Bacon,  Delia,  aided  by  Hawthorne  in  pub- 
lication of  her  Shakspeare  book,  213,  214. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  parallelism  of  his  literary 
career  with  Whipple's,  117,  118. 

Bancroft,  George,  83,  277,  279,  283. 

Bangs,  Edward,  lawyer,  8. 

Barker,  Anna  (Mrs.  Samuel  G.  Ward),  109, 
no. 

Barlow,  Gen.  Francis  C,  336. 


5o6 


Index 


Barnum,  Phlneas  T.,  lOO. 

Barrie,  Sir  James,  in  Salem,  210. 

Bartol,  Dr.  Cyrus  A.,  tribute  to  Whipple, 
122,  123. 

Bates,  Joshua,  iii. 

Bellows,  Rev.  Henry  W.,  head  of  the  Sani- 
tary Commission,  258. 

Bigelow,  Erastus,  475. 

Bigelow,  Dr.  Jacob,  145,  146. 

Bird,  Francis  W.,  295;  on  Gov.  Andrew, 
435,436. 

Bismarck,  Prince,  friendship  with  Motley, 
88,  89;  letter  from  Motley  (1870),  94. 

Blaine,  James  G.,  189. 

Bostonian,  Dr.  Holmes's  typical,  82. 

Bowditch,  Dr.  Henry  IngersoU,  51,  5s;  on 
Dr.  Howe,  275;  on  Jeffries  Wyman,  423, 
424. 

Bowditch,  Prof.  Henry  P.,  290,  321. 

Bradford,  George  Partridge,  teacher,  8. 

Breckinridge,  John  C,  Vice-President,  250. 

Bridge,  Horatio,  and  Hawthorne,  209,  349. 

Bridgman,  Laura,  272. 

Bright,  John,  496,  497,  502. 

Brillat-Savarin,  Anthelme,  La  Physiologie  du 
Gout,  115. 

Brimmer,  Martin,  chosen  a  member  of  the 
Club,  356,  369;  birth  and  ancestry,  366; 
education,  366,  367;  marriage,  367;  public 
services,  368,  369;  connection  with  the 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  368-70;  death,  369; 
an  admirer  of  Millet,  370,  466;  social  life 
and  hospitality,  372,  373;  described  by 
John  Jay  Chapman,  373,  374;  tributes  to, 

374>  375- 

Brook  Farm,  49. 

Brooks,  Charles  T.,  402;  poem  in  honour  of 
Dr.  Howe,  275. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  70,  401. 

Brown,  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin,  Haw- 
thorne's landlord,  209,  210. 

Brown,  John,  and  J.  M.  Forbes,  202,  203; 
at  Harper's  Ferry,  205;  his  speech  in  court, 
205  n. 

Brownell,  Henry  Howard,  war  poems  quoted, 
294,  296;  introduced  to  the  Club,  399, 
400. 

Browning,  Mrs.  E.  B.,  222. 

Browning,  Robert,  380. 

Bruce,  Sir  Frederick,  British  Minister,  405. 

Bull,  Ephraim  Wales,  producer  of  the  Con- 
cord grape,  414. 

Bull,  Ole,  and  Longfellow,  139. 

Burlingame,  Anson,  guest  of  the  Club,  406. 

Burns,  Anthony,  attempted  rescue  of,  274  n. 

Burns,  Robert,  centennial,  197. 

Burr,  Aaron,  anecdote  of,  439. 


Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  64. 
Byron,    Lord,   his   helmet   owned   by   Dr. 
Howe,  270  n. 

Cabot,  James  Elliot,  6,  20  n.;  family,  260, 
262;  at  Harvard,  260;  a  student  in  Eu- 
rope, 260,  261;  becomes  a  lawyer,  262; 
attracts  Emerson's  attention,  262;  en- 
gages in  building,  263,  264;  married,  264; 
active  in  many  ways,  264;  close  friendship 
with  Emerson,  265;  helps  prepare  Letters 
and  Social  Aims  for  the  press,  266; 
Emerson's  literary  executor,  266;  writes 
Life  of  Emerson,  266,  267;  characteristics 
of,  267,  268. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  French  Revolution  con- 
demned by  Prescott,  184;  friendship  with 
Norton,  243;  Henry  James,  Sr.,  on,  330; 
his  munificent  gift  to  Harvard,  463. 

Carpenter,  George  R.,  on  Whittier's  friend- 
ships with  women,  193. 

Carter,  Robert,  274  n.,  282,  481. 

Chambered  Nautilus^  The,  167,  168. 

Chandler,  Peleg  W.,  363. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  on  Hawthrone, 
211. 

Channing,  William  Henry,  7,  8. 

Chapman,  John  Jay,  sketch  of  Martin 
Brimmer  quoted,  367,  372-74. 

Cheever,  Dr.  David,  memories  of  Dr. 
Holmes,  143,  146,  147. 

Cheney,  Mrs.  Ednah  Dow,  12. 

Chicago,  Burlington  &  Quincy  Railroad, 
228,  229. 

Choate,  Rufus,  indifferent  in  cases  of  Sims 
and  Burns,  125. 

Cholmondeley,  ^Thomas,  13;  and  Thoreau, 

59- 

Claflin,  Mrs.  William,  193. 

Clark,  Alvan,  telescope  maker,  55. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  166,  295;  read  the 
service  at  Hawthorne's  funeral,  346. 

Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  130, 163,  284;  Rowse's 
portrait  of,  389,  390. 

Cobb,  Howell,  489. 

Cobden,  Richard,  496;  C.  F.  Adams's  esti- 
mate of,  501,  502. 

Codman,  Col.  Charles  R.,  290. 

"Cold  Roast  Boston,"  222. 

Collyer,  Rev.  Robert,  account  of  the  Club's 
reception  of  Agasslz,  413. 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  302. 

Conway,  Moncure  D.,  helps  protect  Emer- 
son's literary  rights,  265. 

Cooke,  George  Willis,  Life  of  Dwight 
quoted,  47. 

Copyright,  international,  418,  453. 


Index 


507 


Couture,  Thomas,  influence  on  W.  M.  Hunt, 

466,  469. 
Cox,  Gov.  Jacob  Dolson,    quoted,  93,  94, 

479,  480- 
Cranch,  Christopher  Pearse,  75,  411;  and 

J.  S.  Dwight,  47. 
Crayon,  the,  first  American  art  magazine, 

130. 
Criticism,  dangerous,  475. 
Curtis,  George  William,  at  Ashfield,   246, 

247;  friend  of  Dr.  Hedge,  279;  on  J.  T. 

Fields,  378,  379. 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  Sr.,  39. 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  Jr.,  diary  quoted,  13, 
24,  25;  a  good  raconteur,  23,  24,  43;  birth, 
39;  pupil  under  Emerson,  39;  before  the 
mast,  39,  40;  an  admiralty  lawyer,  40; 
a  Free-Soiler,  40-42;  his  connection  with 
the  Club,  42,  43;  a  favourite  story  of,  43; 
appreciated  the  classics,  43;  lacking  in 
tact,  44;  religious  feeling,  45;  voyage 
around  the  world,  236,  237;  public  service, 
344,  410,  41 1;  in  the  trial  of  Jefferson 
Davis,  429. 

Dante,  Longfellow's  work  on,  139,  140,  242, 
395)  438;  Norton's  translation,  242; 
Holmes's  lack  of  interest  in,  438,  439. 

Davis,  Admiral  Charles  H.,  104. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  tried  for  treason,  429. 

Declaration  of  Paris,  the,  494,  495. 

Desor,  Edward,  Swiss  naturalist,  8. 

Dewhurst,  Stephen,  323. 

Dickens,  Charles,  entertained  in  Boston, 
437,438. 

Dickinson,  Lowes,  English  portrait  pamter, 
469. 

Dunlap,  Frances,  afterward  Mrs.  Lowell, 
285. 

Dwight,  John  Sullivan,  in  the  Fahle  for 
Critics,  46;  a  born  lover  of  music,  46;  birth, 
47;  educated  for  the  ministry,  47,  48; 
exchanges  personal  criticisms  with  The- 
odore Parker,  47;  immersed  in  German 
studies,  48;  hterary  work,  48,  49;  at 
Brook  Farm,  49;  marries  Mary  Bullard, 
49;  Dzvight's  Journal  of  Music,  49,  50,  51; 
visits  Europe,  50;  opinion  of  Wagner,  50; 
his  influence,  51,  52;  on  the  taste  of 
mushrooms,  126;  occupies  Dr.  Hedge's 
pulpit  in  Bangor,  279;  plans  Jubilee 
Concert  (1863),  309;  Horatian  Ode  for 
the  Harvard  Commemoration,  402. 

Educational  Commission,  formed,  292,  293. 

Eliot.  President  Charles  W.,  320;  introduces 

changes  at  Harvard,  244,  476-78;  chosen 


into  the  Club,  483;  President  of  the  Club, 
502. 

Ellis,  Dr.  Rufus,  183. 

Emancipation  Proclamation,  the.  Gov.  An- 
drew's opinion  of,  361;  reception  in  Eng- 
land, 497. 

Emerson,  Edward  Bliss,  305. 

Emerson,  Ellen,  quoted,  141. 

Emerson,  Mary  Moody,  anecdote  of,  3  28, 3  29. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  suggests  cipher  for 
a  seal,  5 ;  friendship  with  Samuel  G.  Ward, 
5-10,  54,  113,  114,  116,  338;  relations  with 
Longfellow,  26,  27,  336;  on  Agassiz,  31, 
35,  414;  as  a  teacher,  39;  birth  and  educa- 
tion, 53;  his  interests  universal,  53,  54;  im- 
portance of  the  Club  to,  55-59;  a  good 
listener,  55,  58;  suffered  from  unexpected 
shots  of  wit,  56,  57;  most  abstemious  of 
smokers,  60,  61;  personal  appearance,  61; 
"our  Greek-Yankee,"  118;  verse  sketch  of 
Horatio  Woodman,  125;  appreciation  of 
Dr.  Holmes,  151,  152;  on  immoral  laws, 
168  w.;  with  the  Adirondack  Club,  171-76; 
verse  picture  of  W.  J.  Stillman,  175,  176; 
and  Whittier,  192;  Birthday  Verses  for 
Lowell,  200-02;  address  at  Dr.  Holmes's 
fiftieth  birthday  dinner,  203-05;  relations 
with  J.  Elliot  Cabot,  265-67;  bored  by  the 
"society  of  mere  literary  men,"  278; 
preached  for  Dr.  Hedge  at  Bangor,  278, 
279;  characterizes  Estes  Howe  in  verse, 
283;  on  Holmes's  convivial  talent,  291; 
characterizes  Sumner,  305;  Boston  Hymn 
quoted,  309,  310;  advice  to  Hawthorne, 
315;  Voluntaries  quoted,  318;  friendship 
with  Henry  James,  Sr.,  324,  325;  notes  on 
the  Club,  336-39,  341,  342;  on  Haw- 
thorne's death,  346;  and  Forceythe  Will- 
son,  400;  sketch  of  Jeffries  Wyman  in 
verse,  424;  twice  Phi  Beta  Kappa  orator, 
431;  a  Lyceum  experience,  400,  441;  an 
admirer  of  Thoreau,  475, 476;  his  exquisite 
choice  of  phrases,  477;  lectures  on  philos- 
ophy at  Harvard,  477,  478;  notes  on  the 
laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  Memorial 
Hall,  482. 

Eustis,  Prof.  Henry  Lawrence,  9. 

Everett,  Edward,  76;  and  Benjamin  Peirce, 
100;  first  president  of  Union  Club,  311; 
and  Aaron  Burr,  439. 

Everett,  William,  439;  on  Motley's  influence, 
90. 

Farragut,  Admiral  David  G.,  Dr.  Holmes's 

impressions  of,  4.05. 
Fechter,  Charles  Albert,  actor   of   Hamlet, 

475,  476. 


5o8 


Index 


Felton,  Cornelius  Conway,  letter  to  F.  H. 
Underwood,  15;  joins  the  Club,  19,  20, 
162;  political  difference  with  Sumner,  28, 
162;  birth  and  education,  159;  an  en- 
thusiastic classical  student,  159;  personal 
characteristics,  160;  literary  work,  160, 
161;  idolized  among  the  Greeks,  162; 
anecdotes  of,  163;  president  of  Harvard, 
163,  164;  death,  164,  165,  288,  289;  warm 
friend  of  Dr.  Howe,  272;  on  J.  T.  Fields, 

379,  380- 

Felton,  John  Brooks,  younger  brother  of 
President  Felton,  anecdote  of,  163. 

Felton,  Samuel  M.,  brother  of  President 
Felton,  252. 

Ferguson,  Robert,  recollections  of  Club 
members,  352,  353. 

Fessenden,  Hon.  William  Pitt,  392,  448. 

Fields,  James  Thomas,  68,  153;  Yesterdays 
with  Authors  quoted,  214,  215,  350,  376; 
estimate  of  Hawthorne,  350;  becomes  a 
member  of  the  Club,  356,  376;  as  a  writer, 
376;  birth  and  boyhood,  376,  377;  enters 
the  Old  Corner  Bookstore,  377;  becomes 
a  member  of  Ticknor,  Reed  &  Fields 
(later  Ticknor  &  Fields),  378;  influence 
of  his  personality,  378-81;  relations  with 
authors,  380,  381;  marriage,  381;  the 
Charles  Street  house,  381;  reminiscences 
of  the  Club,  381-86;  death,  387. 

Fields,  Mrs.  James  T.,  193;  describes  Dr. 
Holmes,  153;  story  of  Hawthorne,  207; 
unpublished  journals  quoted,  381-86, 
396,  449,  452,  453;  describes  Bret  Harte, 

.384,  385- 

Firkins,  Prof.  O.  W.,  Study  of  Emerson 
quoted,  55,  56.- 

Fish,  Hamilton,  and  Motley,  92,  93,  459. 

Fisher,  Dr.  John  Dix,  chooses  Dr.  Howe  for 
Asylum  for  the  Blind,  271. 

Flagg,  George  A.,  reminiscences  of  Benja- 
min Peirce,  97. 

Flint,  Charles  L.,  President  of  Massachu- 
setts Agricultural  Society,  22. 

FoUansbee  Pond,  169,  170. 

Follen,  Dr.  Karl,  on  titles  in  America,  448. 

Forbes,  John  Murray,  126;  aids  John 
Brown,  202,  229;  birth  and  education, 
227;  goes  to  China,  227;  ancestry,  228; 
engages  in  railroading,  228;  his  relation  to 
business,  229;  his  island,  Naushon,  230, 
231;  widely  influential,  231,  232;  never 
held  a  political  offlce,  232;  an  indefatiga- 
ble patriot,  239,  250,  294,  311,  312;  en- 
gages steamers  to  take  Massachusetts 
troops  to  Washington,  252,  253;  promotes 
use  of  negroes  as  soldiers,  293 ;  commis- 


sioner to  England,    312,   313;    anecdote 

of,  416;  and  Jeffries  Wyman,  421,  422; 

anxious  about  Reconstruction,  430,  447, 

448. 
Forbes,  Robert  Bennet,  228,  230,  422. 
Forbes,  Col.  William  Hathaway,  233. 
Forster,  John,  an  admirer  of  Felton,  161. 
Forster,  W.  E.,  and  C.  F.  Adams,  496. 
Fort  Sumter,  fall  of,  251,  252. 
Fox,  Lieut.  Gustavus  B.,  afterward  Assistant 

Secretary  of  the  Navy,  251,  254. 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  66,  168. 
Fuller,  Margaret,  109,  450  n. 
Furness,  Horace  Howard,  225. 

Geneva  Tribunal,  the,  499-501. 

Gilman,  Arthur,  Atlantic  Dinners  and 
Diners,  18. 

Gladstone,  William  Ewart,  foolish  speech  by, 
496,  497. 

Godkin,  Edwin  L.,  on  Henry  James,  Sr., 
325;  editor  of  the  Nation,  404. 

Godwin,  Parke,  49. 

Golding,  Frank,  on  Judge  Hoar,  66. 

Grant,  President  U.  S.,  appoints  Motley 
Minister  to  England,  92;  removes  him,  93, 
94;  Dr.  Holmes's  impressions  of,  405; 
elected  President,  455;  appoints  Motley 
Minister  to  England  and  Hoar  Attorney- 
General,  456;  moved  by  one  of  the  Biglow 
Papers,  474, 475 ;  demands  Hoar's  resigna- 
tion, 478;  also  Motley's,  479;  opposition 
to  his  reelection,  500. 

Gray,  Prof.  Asa,  on  Jeffries  Wyman,  423, 
424. 

Gray,  Major  John  C,  290. 

Greeley,  Horace,  nominated  for  the  Presi- 
dency, 500. 

Greene,  George  W.,  intimate  friend  of  Long- 
fellow, 412,  450. 

Greenslet,  Ferris,  quoted,  74. 

Guild,  Rev.  Edward  Chipman,  on  Agassiz 
as  a  teacher,  34. 

Gurney,  Prof.  Ephraim  Whitman,  on  Emer- 
son, 431;  birth  and  education,  442;  as  a 
teacher,  442,  443;  Dean  of  Harvard,  443; 
marriage  and  home  life,  444;  anecdote  told 
by  President  Eliot,  445 ;  death,  446. 

Guyot,  Arnold,  161. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  on  Lowell's  generos- 
ity, 78. 

Hallam,  Henry,  commends  Prescott's  Fer- 
dinand and  Isabella,  185. 

Harte,  Bret,  and  Agassiz,  37,  38;  described 
by  Mrs.  Fields,  375,  376. 

Harvard  College,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  30; 


Index 


509 


Commemoration,  401-03;  new  departures 
under  Pres.  Eliot,  244,  476,  477;  receives 
Brighton  meadows  from  Longfellow,  480; 
corner-stone  of  Memorial  Hall  laid,  482; 
connection  of  Club  members  with:  C.  F. 
Adams,  449,  484;  Agassiz,  30,  33,  36; 
Appleton,  218;  Brimmer,  366;  Cabot,  260, 
264;  Dana,  39,  40;  Dwight,  47;  Emerson, 
53,  448;  FeltOE,  159,  289;  Gurney,  442, 
443,  446;  Hedge,  277,  279,  280;  Hoar,  63, 
70;  Holmes,  146-49;  Estes  Howe,  283, 
284;  W.  M.  Hunt,  465;  Longfellow,  135, 
136;  Lowell,  73,  76;  Motley,  83;  Norton, 
238, 244, 24s ;  Peirce,  96, 97, 105 ;  Prescott, 
182,  183;  Sumner,  299,  301;  Ward,  109; 
Whipple,  118;  Whittier,  192,  344;  Wyman, 
420,  421. 

Harvard  Musical  Association,  49,  51,  52, 
168. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  on  Kavanagh,  27; 
becomes  a  member  of  the  Club,  167;  in 
Italy  and  England,  206;  anecdotes  of,  207, 
209;  characterization  by  Lowell,  208;  at 
Bowdoin,  208,  209;  at  Brook  Farm,  210; 
friendship  with  Emerson  and  Longfellow, 
211,  212,  213;  love  of  children,  212,  213; 
aids  Delia  Bacon,  213,  214;  happy  relation 
with  his  publishers,  214;  returns  to  Amer- 
ica, 235;  in  1863,  315;  friendship  with 
Franklin  Pierce,  320  n.,  345,  347;  Henry 
James  on,  331,  332;  letter  to  Longfellow, 
335;  in  failing  health,  344;  death,  345; 
Emerson  on,  346,  347;  memorial  poem  by 
Longfellow,  347,  348;  estimates  of,  by 
Bridge,  349,  Fields,  350,  J.  K.  Hosmer  and 
William  AlUngham,  351. 

Hedge,  Frederick  Henry,  influenced  by  Ger- 
man literature  and  philosophy,  277;  min- 
ister in  Arlington  and  Bangor,  278;  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  orator  at  Harvard,  279; 
literary  work,  279,  280;  minister  in  Provi- 
dence and  Brookline,  279;  professor  at 
Harvard,  279,  280;  not  a  born  teacher, 
280;  his  Reason  in  Religion,  463,  464. 

Hedge,  Levi,  professor  at  Harvard,  277,  278. 

Herbert,  George,  his  "ideal  man,"  145. 

Higginson,  Major  Henry  Lee,  52,  85,  290, 
402  n.,  430  n.,  444. 

Higginson,  Thomas  Wentworth,  77;  remi- 
niscences of  Benjamin  Peirce,  96,  97;  on 
Whittier's  reticence,  190,  191;  attempts 
rescue  of  Anthony  Burns,  274  n. 

Hill,  Rev.  Thomas,  99. 

Hillard,  George  S.,  314. 

Hoar,  Ebenezer  Rockwood,  on  R.  H.  Dana, 
Jr.,  43;  ancestry,  63;  at  Harvard,  63; 
friendship  with  Lowell,  64,  403,  416;  a 


successful  lawyer,  64;  his  literary  taste, 
64,  67;  swims  the  Tiber,  65;  "Conscience 
Whig,"  65;  Justice  of  the  Court  of  Com- 
mon Pleas,  opinion  of  Fugitive  Slave  Law, 
66;  his  keen  wit,  68,  69;  unpopular  among 
politicians,  69,  461;  his  strong  religious 
faith,  69,  70;  personal  appearance,  70; 
portrait  of,  in  Harvard  Union,  71;  pro- 
poses health  of  Stillman,  178,  179;  Justice 
of  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court,  203; 
tribute  to  Sumner,  307;  Attorney-General, 
456-58;  nominated  for  Supreme  Court, 
461,  462;  "a  man  who  snubbed  sev- 
enty Senators,"  461,  462;  resignation  de- 
manded, 69,  478. 

Hoar,  Elizabeth,  64,  68. 

Hoar,  George  Frisbie,  301;  appreciation  of 
Felton,  162,  163;  on  Whittier,  189,  195. 

Hoar,  Samuel,  290. 

Holmes,  Rev.  Abiel,  record  of  the  birth  of  his 
firstborn,  143. 

Holmes,  John,  61, 282,  284;  a  good  saying  of, 
179. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  says  the  Atlantic 
Club  never  existed,  16;  memories  of  Sat- 
urday Club's  early  days,  23,  24;  his  appel- 
lation for  Agassiz,  33;  contrast  with  Low- 
ell, 79;  sketches  career  of  Motley,  82,  83; 
A  Parting  Health  (to  Motley),  133 ;  a  medi- 
cal student  in  Paris,  143,  144;  a  practi- 
tioner, 14s;  professor  of  anatomy  and 
physiology,  146-49;  the  microscope  his 
favourite  toy,  146;  described  by  Dr. 
Cheever,  146;  his  literary  work,  146,  147, 
150,  151,  167;  his  wit,  148,  149,  154;  on 
Stuart's  portrait  of  Washington,  149;  his 
homes,  150;  his  love  for  the  Hub,  150, 171; 
prized  the  Saturday  Club,  152,  153;  de- 
scribed by  Mrs.  Fields,  153;  interested  in 
his  own  personality,  154;  reverent  and 
religious,  154,  155,  413;  close  friend  of 
Mrs.  Stowe,  155;  his  creed,  156;  on  moral 
automatism,  156;  comment  on  his  own 
photograph,  156;  his  service  to  young 
mothers,  157,  167,  168;  last  years  and 
death,  157;  ambitious  to  be  thought  a 
poet,  167,  j6S;De  Sauiy  quoted,  177,  178; 
poem  for  the  Burns  centennial,  198,  199; 
fiftieth  birthday  dinner,  203;  Brother 
Jonathan's  Lament  for  Sister  Caroline 
quoted,  249,  250;  and  Anthony  TroUope, 
257,  258;  Never  or  Now  quoted,  291, 
292;  Skakspeare  quoted,  340;  Farewell  to 
Agassiz  quoted,  397;  introduces  H.  H. 
Brownell  to  the  Club,  399;  letter  to  Mot- 
ley (1865),  404,  405;  his  feeling  about 
Dante,  438,  439;  on  the  discomforts  of 


5IO 


Index 


taverns,  440;  poem  to  Longfellow  (1868), 
450;  on  changes  at  Harvard  by  Presi- 
dent Eliot,  476. 

Holmes,  Judge  Oliver  Wendell,  Jr.,  290, 291. 

Honorary  degrees,  448,  481. 

Hooper,  Capt.  Edward  W.,  290,  293. 

Hosmer,  James  Kendall,  describes  Agassiz, 
31,  32;  first  meeting  with  Longfellow,  138; 
on  Hawthorne,  315,  316;  experience  with 
Gov.  Andrew,  363-65. 

Howe,  Dr.  Estes,  a  bit  overshadowed  by  his 
associates,  282;  birth  and  education,  283, 
284;  a  doctor  in  Ohio,  284;  marriage,  284; 
active  in  Abolition  politics,  284;  a  man 
of  affairs,  285;  elected  a  member  of  the 
Club,  285;  his  last  years,  285,  286. 

Howe,  Dr.  Henry  Marion,  reminiscences  of 
a  meeting  of  the  Club,  321. 

Howe,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward,  269,  272,  273,  402. 

Howe,  M.  A.  DeWolfe,  quoted,  316. 

Howe,  Samuel,  father  of  Estes  Howe,  283. 

Howe,  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley,  166;  relations 
with  John  Brown,  202,  206;  investigates 
health  of  soldiers,  253;  one  of  the  most 
romantic  characters  of  last  century,  269; 
birth  and  education,  269,  270;  joins  Greek 
patriots,  270;  appearance  and  character- 
istics, 270,  271,  273,  274;  takes  charge  of 
Perkins  Institution  for  the  Blind,  271, 
272;  sent  by  Lafayette  to  aid  Polish  refu- 
gees, 271;  special  friendships,  272,  273; 
first  meeting  with  Julia  Ward,  272;  mar- 
riage, 273;  work  for  feeble-minded,  273, 
274;  goes  to  aid  of  Cretans,  274;  active 
against  slavery,  274,  295;  Charles  T. 
Brooks's  poem  on,  275;  helps  recruit 
coloured  soldiers,  312. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  406;  on  Agassiz,  36- 
38;  jest  on  Henry  James,  Sr.,  325. 

Hughes,  Sarah  Forbes,  Letters  and  Recollec- 
tions of  John  Murray  Forbes,  313  n.; 
quoted,  232. 

Hughes,  Thomas,  481. 

Humboldt,  Alexander  von,  hundredth  anni- 
versary celebrated,  461. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  197  «.,  214. 

Hunt,  William  Morris,  joins  the  Club,  464, 
465;  his  mother,  465;  his  art  studies,  465, 
466;  in  Newport  and  Boston,  467;  some 
unsuccessful  portraits,  468;  portrait  of 
Sumner,  468,  469;  as  a  teacher,  469;  some 
characteristic  sayings,  470,  473;  turns  to 
landscape  painting,  470;  mural  painting, 
471;  his  death,  472;  his  characteristics, 
472. 

Huntington,  Rev.  F.  D.,  collaborates  with 
Dr.  Hedge,  279. 


Irving,  Washington,  surrenders  historical 
theme  to  Prescott,  185. 

Jackson,  Dr.  Charles  T.,  270  «. 

Jackson,  Dr.  James,  144. 

James,  Garth  Wilkinson,  327,  328,  430  n. 

James,  Henry,  Senior,  7,  8,  290;  chosen  into 
the  Club,  321,  330;  his  early  fight  against 
Calvinism,  322;  goes  to  Princeton  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  323;  friendship  with 
Emerson,  324;  a  Swedenborgian,  325; 
takes  his  children  to  Europe  to  study,  326; 
settles  in  Newport,  327;  appearance  and 
characteristics,  327;  home  life,  327,  328; 
tilt  with  Alcott,  328,  329;  on  Carlyle,  330; 
on  Hawthorne  and  W.  E.  Channing,  331, 
332;  Midsummer  quoted,  333. 

James,  Henry,  Jr.,  on  Norton,  240,  241;  on 
J.  Elliot  Cabot,  265;  some  reminiscences 
of  Sumner,  306;  on  his  father's  faith,  325; 
at  school  In  Europe,  326;  Life  of  W.  W. 
Story  cited,  277;  on  the  Gurneys,  445. 

James,  Robertson,  327,  328,  430  n. 

Johnson,  President  Andrew,  447;  and  Mot- 
ley, 91,  417,  418. 

Johnson,  Reverdy,  Minister  to  England,  458. 

Kendrick,  Prof.  A.  C,  103. 
Knowlton,  Helen  M.,  and  W.  M.  Hunt,  469, 
471. 

Lafayette,  Marquis,  sends  Dr.  Howe  to  aid 
of  Polish  refugees,  271. 

Lathrop,  George  Parsons,  345. 

Lawrence,  Bishop  William,  on  R.  H.  Dana, 
Jr.,  42. 

Lee,  Col.  Henry,  reminiscences  of  Benjamin 
Peirce,  98,  99;  on  Gov.  Andrew,  434. 

Leverrier,  Urbain  Jean  Joseph,  calculations 
pronounced  inexact,  100. 

Lewis,  Sir  George  Cornwall,  a  saying  of,  1 1 6. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  appoints  Motley  Minister 
to  Austria,  88;  Motley's  estimate  of,  90, 
91;  and  Gov.  Andrew,  360-62;  assassina- 
tion of,  394. 

Lind,  Jenny,  100,  1 01. 

Longfellow,  Charles  Appleton,  139,  320. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  relations 
with  Emerson,  26,  27;  and  Sumner,  28, 
288,  295;  and  Agassiz,  31,  33;  letter  to 
Motley,  87,  88;  Fiftieth  Birthday  of 
Agassiz,  quoted,  131;  student  and  pro- 
fessor at  Bowdoin  College,  135;  succeeds 
George  TIcknor  at  Harvard,  135;  study 
and  travel  In  Europe,  135,  137,  140;  anti- 
slavery  poems,  136;  Evangeline,  137; 
Arabian  in  hospitality,   137;  popularity 


Index 


5" 


of  his  poems,  138,  141;  his  outward  ap- 
pearance, 138;  his  interest  in  music,  138, 
139;  his  married  life,  139;  translation  of 
Dante,  139,  140,  319,  395,  412,  438;  hon- 
oured in  England,  140;  death,  141;  accused 
of  fraud  by  Poe,  160;  on  Felton's  death, 
164,  165,  288,  289;  vexed  at  violation  of 
game  laws,  168;  friendship  with  Haw- 
thorne, 211,  212;  origin  of  Evangeline^  212; 
took  the  war  hard,  255;  on  the  "dangerous 
classes,"  295;  finishes  translation  of  the 
Divine  Comedy,  319;  memorial  poem  on 
Hawthorne,  347,  348;  Noel  quoted,  354- 
56;  ItaHan  poem  to  Lowell,  407,  408; 
honoured  by  Victor  Emmanuel,  418; 
sixtieth  birthday,  428;  farewell  dinner 
(1868),  449,  450;  reception  in  England, 
451,  460;  visits  Italy,  456,  459;  gives  the 
Brighton  meadows  to  Harvard,  480. 

Lovering,  Prof.  Joseph,  resemblance  to 
Tennyson,  451  n, 

Lowell,  Col.  Charles  Russell,  269,  311,  317. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  first  editor  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  17,  72,  128;  dinner  to, 
at  Revere  House,  25,  26;  on  Emerson,  61; 
on  Judge  Hoar,  64,  416,  457;  birth,  72; 
education,  73 ;  pure  Yankee,  73;  compared 
with  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  and  Long- 
fellow, 74;  a  well-equipped  talker,  74,  75; 
rich  in  cosmopoHtan  experience,  76;  his 
attachment  to  the  Club,  77,  78;  his  char- 
acter, 78;  always  a  Romanticist,  79; 
affection  of  his  intimates,  80;  friendship 
with  W.  J.  Stillman,  129,  130;  with  the 
Adirondack  Club,  172;  story  of,  173; 
account  of  some  Club  dinners,  178,  179; 
fortieth  birthday,  200;  verse  portrait  of 
Hawthorne,  208;  change  in  Hosea  Biglow's 
views  of  war,  255-57;  Washers  of  the 
Shroud  quoted,  287,  288;  tribute  to  Robert 
G.  Shaw,  318;  his  work  on  the  North 
American  Review,  334;  reclothes  Hosea 
Biglow  for  Emerson's  Parnassus,  334  and 
n.;  Commemoration  Ode,  401;  poem  for 
Longfellow's  sixtieth  birthday,  428,  429; 
publishes  Under  the  Willows,  453,  454; 
anecdote  of,  454;  antipodal  to  Thoreau, 
475)  4765  friendship  with  Thomas  Hughes, 
481;  praises  C.  F.  Adams,  498. 

Lowell  Institute,  lectures,  by  Lowell  at,  25; 
by  Agassiz,  30;  by  Whipple,  118,  206; 
by  Felton,  162;  by  Jeffries  Wyman,  421. 

Lyceum  system,  influence  of,  119,  149,  439. 

Lyman,  Lieut.-Col.  Theodore,  222,  290. 

Mann,  Horace,  and  Dr.  Howe,  273. 
Mason  and  Slidell  incident,  256,  257,  495. 


Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review,  the,  263. 

McClellan,  Gen.  George  B.,  visits  Boston, 
319,  320. 

Melville,  Herman,  76. 

Meyer,  Mrs.,  restaurant  of,  13. 

Milman,  Dean,  186. 

Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  describes  Dr. 
Holmes,  156. 

Monti,  Luigi,  Italian  exile,  befriended  by 
Longfellow,  139. 

Moore,  Prof.  Charles  H.,  on  Norton's  teach- 
ing, 244. 

Morris,  William,  161;  friendship  with  Nor- 
ton, 243. 

Morse,  John  Torrey,  quoted,  18;  on  Gov. 
Andrew,  435;  Life  of  Dr.  Holmes  cited, 

143,157,440- 
Motley,  John  Lothrop,  his  career  outlined 
by  Dr.  Holmes,  82,  83 ;  birth  and  educa- 
tion, 83;  Morton's  Hope,  83,  84;  first  his- 
torical work,  84;  influence  of  Prescott,  84, 
185,  186;  work  in  Europe,  85,  86;  has 
difficulty  in  finding  a  publisher,  86,  452; 
success  of  The  Dutch  Republic,  86,  87;  be- 
comes a  member  of  the  Club,  87;  congrat- 
ulatory letter  from  Longfellow,  87,  88; 
Minister  to  Austria,  88;  friendship  with 
Bismarck,  88,  89,  94;  letter  to  Mrs.  Lin- 
coln after  the  assassination,  90,  91;  re- 
turns to  Boston,  91;  a  witty  saying,  92; 
Minister  to  England,  92,  93,  456,  458, 
459,  479;  friendship  with  Sumner,  93; 
letter  to  Bismarck  (1870),  94,  95;  dies  in 
England,  95;  praised  byDean  Stanley,  95; 
dinner  to,  132,  133;  recalled  from  Austria, 
416-18;  in  Presidential  campaign  of  1868, 
449;  literary  work,  452,  453. 

Nahant,  T.  G.  Appleton's  nickname  for,  222. 

Nation,  the,  estabhshed,  404. 

Naushon,  Mr.  Forbes's  island,  230. 

Neptune,  planet,  discovered,  lOO. 

New  England,  in  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  1-4. 

New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society,  358. 

New  England  Loyal  PubUcation  Society, 
work  of,  239,  294. 

New  England  Magazine,  the,  129  n. 

Newhall,  Col.  Frederic  C,  quoted,  393. 

Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  describes  dinner  to 
Lowell,  25,  26;  recollection  of  the  Wards, 
110;  friendship  with  W.  J.  Stillman,  130; 
on  Longfellow's  kindliness,  137;  consults 
with  Longfellow  over  translation  of 
Dante,  140,  242,  395;  recollections  of 
Hawthorne,  215;  influence  of  Ruskin,  238, 
242,  243,  454;  war  service,  238,  239;  mar- 


512 


Index 


ried,  239,  240;  his  home  at  Shady  Hill, 

240,  241,  244;  literary  and  sociological 
interests,  241;  friendship  with  Parkman, 

241,  242;  translation  of  Dante,  242;  five 
years  in  Europe,  242,  243;  death  of  his 
wife,  243;  friendship  with  William  Morris 
and  Carlyle,  243;  Professor  of  the  Fine 
Arts  at  Harvard,  244;  his  teaching  ethical, 
245;  other  relations  with  Harvard,  245; 
advice  to  a  young  man,  246;  his  home  at 
Ashfield,  246,  247;  misapprehended  in  his 
day,  247;  writes  Curtis  about  the  Emanci- 
pation Proclamation,  293;  an  editor  of  the 
North  American  Review,  316,  334;  letter 
to  Curtis  (1863),  320;  annoyed  by  black- 
balling in  the  Club,  383;  estimate  of  Gov. 
Andrew,  391;  in  Italy,  482. 

Ogden,  Rollo,  biographer  of  Prescott,  182, 

184,  185. 
Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  258,  320. 

Paine,  Albert  Bigelow,  biographer  of  Mark 
Twain,  194. 

Paine,  John  K.,  402. 

Parker,  Francis  Edward,  law  partner  of  J. 
Elliot  Cabot,  262. 

Parker,  Harvey  D.,  22. 

Parker,  Theodore,  and  J.  S.  Dwight,  47. 

Parker  House,  meeting-place  of  the  Club, 
21,  22;  Thoreau's  experience  at,  60. 

Parkman,  Francis,  76;  letter  to  F.  H.  Under- 
wood, 18  n.\  friendship  with  Norton,  241, 
242. 

Parsons,  Gov.  Lewis  E.,  406. 

Parsons,  Theophilus,  186. 

Peabody,  Andrew  P.,  Holmes's  jest,  151, 152. 

Peabody,  Elizabeth,  advises  J.  S.  Dwight  on 
prayer,  48. 

Peabody,  George,  endows  Museum  of 
American  Archaeology,  426. 

Peace  Congress  at  Washington  (1861),  250, 
251. 

Pearson,  Henry  Greenleaf,  An  American 
Railroad-Builder  cited,  229;  Life  of  John 
A.  Andrew  quoted,  3 5 1,  352.  359, 432,433. 

„  447- 

Peirce,  Benjamin,  professor  at  Harvard,  96; 
reminiscences  of,  96-100;  challenges  Le- 
verrier's  calculations,  100;  his  judgment 
in  emergency,  100,  lOi;  head  of  the  Coast 
Survey,  loi;  anecdotes  of,  102,  105,  403; 
Ben  Yamen's  Song  of  Geometry,  102,  103, 
105,  106;  some  characteristics  of,  104; 
consulting  astronomer  to  Coast  Survey, 

„  253,  254. 

Peirce,  Prof.  James  Mills,  100. 


Perkins,  Col.  Thomas  Handasyd,  260;  gives 
house  and  grounds  for  Institution  for  the 
Blind,  272. 

Perry,  Bliss,  on  Francis  H.  Underwood,  14, 
17- 

Perry,  Nora,  189,  190. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  166,  486. 

Philosophers'  Camp,  the,  170,  175,  282. 

Pierce,  Edward  L.,  heads  Educational  Com- 
mission, 292,  293. 

Pierce,  President  Franklin,  and  Hawthorne, 
.209,  315,  32.0  n.,  345,  347. 

Pierce,  Dr.  John,  279. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  charges  Longfellow  with 
literary  fraud,  160. 

Prescott,  William  Hickling,  influence  on 
Motley,  84;  becomes  a  member  of  the 
Club,  167,  180;  first  member  of  the  Club 
to  die,  180;  anecdote  of,  181;  deeply 
mourned,  181;  "rosy  and  young,"  182;  his 
biographers,  182;  his  ancestry,  182;  loses 
sight  of  left  eye,  183;  marries  Susan 
Amory,  183;  has  passion  for  historical 
writing,  183,  184;  publishes  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  184,  185;  relations  with  Irving 
and  Motley,  185,  186;  secret  of  his  enjoy- 
ment of  life,  186,  187;  death,  199. 

Public  service  of  Club  members:  C.  F. 
Adams,  253,  448,  449,  485-501;  Andrew, 
351,  358-65;  T.  G.  Appleton,  221,  226; 
Brimmer,  368,  369;  Cabot,  254,  264; 
Dana,  44,  344,  410,  411,  429,  455;  Forbes, 
231,  232,  234,  250-53,  352,  359;  Asa  Gray, 
254;  Hawthorne,  210;  Judge  Hoar,  69, 
253,  456,  462,  478;  Estes  Howe,  285;  S.  G. 
Howe,  253,  271,  273,  275,  312;  Lowell,  76; 
Motley,  84,  88,  91-93,  449,  456;  Norton, 
239;  Peirce,  104,  253,  254;  Sumner,  297, 
302;  Woodman,  124,  126. 

Putnam,  Simeon,  Felton's  teacher,  159. 

Quincy,  Edmund,  166,  295,  439. 

Radical  Club,  the,  191. 

Rantoul,  Hon.  Robert  S.,  reminiscences  ol 

Benjamin  Peirce,  99,  lOO,   103,   104;  of 

Hawthorne,  209,  210. 
Reed,  E.  J.,  Chief  Constructor  of  British 

Navy,  praises  The  Building  of  the  Ship, 

459,  460. 
Rice,  Alexander  H.,  and  Emerson,  383. 
Richards,  Mrs.  Laura  E.,  on  Dr.  Howe,  271, 

273;  writes  of  the  relation  between  him 

and  Sumner,  304. 
Ripley,  George,  48,  49,  278. 
Robbins,  Rev.  Chandler,  anecdote  of,  382. 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  240. 


Index 


513 


Round  Hill  School,  Northampton,  83,  96, 
109,  159,  217,  227,  283. 

Rowse,  Samuel  Worcester,  portrait  of  Haw- 
thorne, 350;  elected  to  the  Club,  356;  his 
familiarity  with  Shakspeare,  388;  draws 
crayon  head  of  Longfellow,  388;  portrait 
of  Emerson,  389;  his  best  portraits,  389, 
390;  ill-health  and  death,  391. 

Ruskin,  John,  relations  with  Norton,  238, 
242,  243,  454. 

Russell,  Lord  John,  C.  F.  Adams's  significant 
message  to,  314;  and  Motley,  453;  and 
Adams,  493-98. 

Russell,  William  G.,  on  Yankee  wit,  68. 

Sampson,  Admiral  William  Thomas,  290. 

Sanborn,  Frank  B.,  12,  13,  327;  tribute  to 
Benjamin  Peirce,  97;  on  S.  G.  Howe,  269. 

San  Domingo,  annexation  urged  by  President 
Grant,  297;  opposed  by  Sumner,  479. 

Sanitary  Commission,  the  National,  239, 
258,  259,  264,  275. 

Sargent,  Capt.  Charles  S.,  290. 

Sargent,  Mrs.  John  T.,  191. 

Saturday  Club,  the,  origins  of,  i;  foreshad- 
owings,  4,  5;  nears  realization,  9;  born, 
11;  beginnings  of,  12-16;  original  mem- 
bers, 19;  first  additions,  19,  20;  classi- 
fication of  members,  21;  meeting-places, 
21,  22,  115;  elaborateness  of  early  din- 
ners, 22,  23;  sketches  of  first  members, 
30-127;  incorporated  (1886),  46;  attempts 
to  use  influence  at  Washington,  93,  479; 
many  members  contributors  to  the  At- 
lantic, 128;  members  buy  tract  of  land  in 
Adirondacks,  131;  dinner  to  Agassiz,  131; 
dinner  to  Motley,  132;  called  "The  Mu- 
tual Admiration  Society,"  153;  aggressive 
reformers  not  desirable  members,  166;  in- 
formality in  early  years,  167;  some  Club 
dinners  in  1858,  168,  169,  178,  179;  the 
Burns  centennial,  197-99;  celebrates 
Lowell's  fortieth  birthday,  200-02;  and 
Dr.  Holmes's  fiftieth,  203-05;  activities 
of  members  in  i860,  234;  most  of  the 
members  strong  anti-slavery  men,  250; 
activities  of  members  in  1861,  253,  254, 
258,  259;  death  of  Pres.  Felton,  288,  289; 
war  work  of  members  in  1862,  290-95; 
and  in  1863,  312-15,  317,  320;  literary 
work,  316,  318,  319;  notes  by  Emerson 
on  Club  meetings  in  1864,  336,  337;  three 
hundredth  anniversary  of  Shakspeare's 
birth,  337-43;  political  activity  of  mem- 
bers in  1864,  351,  352;  Scott  centenary, 
385,  386;  dinner  to  Agassiz  (1865),  396- 
99;  some  club  dinners  in  1865,  399,  406; 


in  1866,  412,  413,  415;  Hterary  work  of 
Club  members  in  1866,  416;  some  dinners 
in  1867,  428,  436,  437,  439;  farewell  din- 
ner to  Longfellow  (1868),  449-51;  some 
meetings  in  1868,  452,  453;  activities  of 
some  of  the  members  in  1869,  456-64; 
some  meetings  in  1870,  475,  477,  483. 

Scott,  Gen.  Winfield,  at  outbreak  of  Civil 
War,  250,  251. 

Scudder,  Horace  E.,  Lije  of  Lowell  cited, 
17,  129,  257,  394. 

Seguin,  Dr.  Edouard,  on  idiocy,  273. 

Seward,  William  Henry,  458,  489;  and  Mot- 
ley, 91,  417,  418;  fails  of  presidential 
nomination,  234;  and  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  493,  494. 

Shady  Hill,  Norton's  Cambridge  home,  240, 
241,  244. 

Shakers,  the,  211,  347. 

Shakspeare,  three  hundredth  anniversary  of 
birth  celebrated  by  the  Club,  337-43. 

Shaw,  Col.  Robert  Gould,  death  of,  317, 
402  «.;  tributes  of  Lowell  and  Emerson, 
318. 

Sheridan,  Gen.  Philip  H.,  in  the  Shenandoah 
Valley,  393.    _ 

Slavery,  a  dividing  force,  135,  136,  160,  162; 
Scripture  argument  for,  169;  activity  of 
Club  members  against:  in  general,  162, 
250;  of  Gov.  Andrew,  357,  360;  of  Martin 
Brimmer,  367;  of  Dana,  40-42;  of  Emer- 
son, 192;  of  Forbes,  202,  229;  of  Estes 
Howe,  284;  of  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  274;  of 
Longfellow,  136;  of  Sumner,  302;  of 
Whittier,  189,  191. 

Sophocles,  Prof.  E.  A.,  writes  Greek  epi- 
taph for  Felton's  gravestone,  164;  and 
Longfellow  translates  it,  289;  character- 
ization of,  289  M. 

Stanley,  Dean  A.  P.,  eulogizes  Motley,  95. 

Stanley,  Hon.  Lyulph,  414. 

Stanton,  Secretary  Edwin  M.,  405. 

Stearns,  Major  George  L.,  293,  312. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  on  the  Saturday  Club 
circle,  77;  letter  to  Norton  quoted,  78,  79. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  an  "incurable 
child,"  74,  75. 

Stewart,  Robert  M.,  Governor  of  Missouri, 
203,  229. 

StlUman,  William  J.,  129;  friend  of  Lowell 
and  Norton,  129,  130;  conducts  the 
Crayon,  130;  lures  Lowell  to  the  Adiron- 
dack Mountains,  130;  buys  tract  for  the 
Adirondack  Club,  131;  arranges  the  first 
encampment,  169;  paints  picture  of  the 
group,  170,  171;  his  feeling  for  Agassiz, 
171,  172;  passionate  personal  attachment 


514 


Index 


for  Lowell,  172,  173;  estimate  of  Emer- 
son, 173-75;  account  of  "the  Philoso- 
phers' Camp,"  282;  champion  of  the 
Cretans,  411;  on  Jeffries  Wyman,  424. 

Story,  William  Wetmore,  277,  298;  describes 
Sumner,  299, 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  close  friendship 
with  Dr.  Holmes,  155,  438. 

Sullivan,  Richard,  procures  Fields  a  place 
in  Carter  &  Hendee's  bookstore,  377. 

Sumner,  Charles,  166,  284;  Longfellow's 
friendship  with,  28,  306;  poUtical_  an- 
tagonism of  Felton,  28,  162,  304;  friend- 
ship with  Motley,  93;  letter  to  Long- 
fellow on  Prescott's  death,  181,  199; 
relations  with  Whittier,  191,  192;  cen- 
sured by  Massachusetts  Legislature,  191; 
treated  by  Dr.  Brown-Sequard,  205; 
speech  on  the  Trent  affair,  288;  only  mem- 
ber of  the  Club  chosen  in  1862,  288;  out- 

i  line  of  his  life,  297;  in  the  Senate,  297, 
298,  302,  307,  458;  connection  with  the 
Club,  298;  misrepresented,  298,  303;  his 
plan  of  life  in  the  Law  School,  299;  im- 
pressions of  persons  who  knew  him,  299- 
301;  some  of  his  intimate  friends,  301, 
304-07;  dominant  in  conversation,  303; 
Whittier's  ode  to,  quoted,  307,  308;  rela- 
tions with  C.  F.  Adams,  453,  490;  rela- 
tions with  President  Grant,  479. 

Symposium,  the,  4,  5,  54. 

Taylor,  Bayard,  191. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  380;  visited  "by  Longfel- 
low, 140,  451;  greeting  to  Longfellow,  428. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  on  Prescott,  185. 

Thayer,  Prof.  James  B.,  and  the  New  Eng- 
land Loyal  Publication  Society,  294. 

Thompson,  George,  influence  on  Gov. 
Andrew,  357. 

Thoreau,  Henry  David,  on  clubs,  59,  60; 
criticises  Whipple,  120;  Emerson's  ap- 
preciation of,  475,  476;  antipodal  to 
Lowell,  476. 

Ticknor,  George,  76,  IIO;  writes  Life  of 
Prescott,  182. 

Tompkins,  Frank  H.,  his  portrait  of  Judge 
Hoar,  71. 

Town-and-Country  Club,  the,  5,  6,  54. 

Transcendental  Club,  the,  278. 

Trent  affair,  the,  256,  257,  288,  495. 

TroUope,  Anthony,  anecdote  of,  257,  258. 

Trowbridge,  John  T.,  and  H.  H.  Brownell, 
399,  400. 

Tuckerman,  Prof.  Edward,  botanist,  7. 

Twain,  Mark,  at  Whittier  birthday  dinner, 
194. 


Underwood,  Francis  H.,  literary  adviser  to 
Phillips  &  Sampson,  14,  17;  the  editor 
who  never  was  editor,  14,  16,  17;  on  Long- 
fellow's anti-slavery  influence,  136  n.\ 
on  Fel ton's  mellowness,  160;  on  Whit- 
tier's social  diffidence,  190. 

Union  Club,  Boston,  285;  meeting-place  of 
the  Saturday  Club,  115;  establishment 
of,  29s,  311;  promoters  of,  311. 

Vaughan,  Henry,  quoted,  208,  350. 
Vedder,  Elihu,  467. 
Very,  Jones,  260. 

Walker,  Charles  Howard,  on  Norton's  so- 
called  pessimism,  247. 

Walker,  Gen.  Francis  A.,  290. 

Walker,  James,  President  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, 70,  163,  182. 

Ward,  George  Cabot,  brother  of  Samuel  G. 
Ward,  115,  445. 

Ward,  Julia,  marries  Dr.  Howe,  272,  273. 

Ward,  Samuel,  brother  of  Julia  Ward  Howe, 

Ward,  Samuel  Gray,  friendship  with  Emer- 
son, 5,  54,  113,  114,  116;  letter  to  Norton, 
6;  memories  of  the  Club's  early  days,  23; 
birth  and  education,  109;  marriage,  109; 
in  Lenox,  no,  in,  116;  agent  of  Bar- 
ings, III,  112,  115;  contributor  to  the 
Dial,  112,  113;  a  many-sided  man,  113; 
effects  purchase  of  Alaska,  115;  interested 
in  establishing  the  Nation,  115;  fond  of 
best  French  literature,  115;  later  life  and 
death,  1 16. 

Ward,  Thomas  Wren,  father  of  Samuel  G. 
Ward,  109,  in;  treasurer  of  the  Athe- 
naeum, 113;  death  of,  114,  I15. 

Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  Motley's  opinion 
of,  as  a  critic,  86,  87;  on  Motley,  91,  92; 
parallelism  of  his  Hterary  career  with 
Walter  Bagehot's,  117;  birth,  118;  as  a 
critical  essayist,  1 18,  119;  influence  of 
the  Lyceum  on,  119,  120;  personal  char- 
acteristics, 121;  Recollections  of  Agassiz 
quoted,  I2i,  122;  on  the  Saturday  Club, 
122;  some  of  his  good  sayings,  122;  Dr. 
Bartol's  tribute,  122,  123;  one  of  the  first 
to  speak  a  good  word  for  Whittier,  189; 
lectures  at  Lowell  Institute,  206. 

Whist  Club,  the,  282,  285. 

White,  Lois,  afterward  Mrs.  Estes  Howe, 
284. 

White,  Maria,  afterward  Mrs.  Lowell, 
284. 

Whitman,  Walt,  195. 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  becomes  a  mem- 


Index 


515 


ber  of  the  Club,  167,  188;  habitually- 
avoided  Club  dinners,  188;  a  skilful  lobby- 
ist for  good  causes,  189;  no  mere  recluse, 
189;  at  dinners  of  the  Atlantic  Club,  190; 
remarks  at  memorial  service  for  Sumner, 
191;  friendship  with  Lowell,  191,  192; 
overseer  of  Harvard,  192;  relations  with 
Emerson,  192;  friendships  with  women, 
193;  seventieth  birthday  dinner,  194; 
eightieth  birthday  celebration,  195;  his 
last  poem,  195;  qualities  of  his  poetry, 
^95)  196;  ode  to  Sumner  quoted,  307,  308; 
At  Port  Royal  quoted,  316;  poem  on  Gov. 
Andrew,  436. 

Willson,  Forceythe,  friendship  "with  Lowell 
and  Emerson,  400,  401. 

Winter,  William,  212. 

Wit,  Emerson  on,  57;  Yankee,  68. 


Woodman,  Horatio,  brought  the  Saturday 
Club  into  being,  12,  124;  letter  to  Emer- 
son, 13;  manager  of  feasts,  22;  birth  and 
characteristics,  124;  a  public-spirited 
man,  124,  126;  a  member  of  the  Adiron- 
dack Club,  125;  sketched  in  verse  by 
Emerson,  125;  a  hero-worshipper  of  Rufus 
Choate,  125;  death,  127;  The  Flag  quoted, 
251,  252. 

Wright,  Chauncey,  close  friend  of  Rowse 
and  Gurney,  390,  445  n. 

Wyman,  Dr.  Jeifries,  birth  and  boyhood, 
420;  member  of  the  Boston  Fire  Depart- 
ment, 420;  curator  of  the  Lowell  Insti- 
tute, 421;  professor  in  Harvard  Medical 
School,  421;  an  original  experimenter, 
422,  425,  426;  opinions  of  some  friends, 
423-27;  death,  427. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S    .   A 


Date  Due 

iftva 

1  ^^? 

ncT    ">  R     19^ '^ 

QCT    ^U    i^- 

AW    1  fi    f^ 

nrp 

ULL/     1  L 

1994 

JAN  2C 

2006 

f) 

'[mmii 


53781 


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